love, actually is Mr. Bean selling you jewellery in a bag that
is never
ready for consumption,
love, actually is not
your co-worker, or
your best friend’s wife, or
your busty assistant, or
your failed career,
or love is, actually
your failed career,
your busty assistant, or
your best friend’s wife, or
your co-worker, or
love, actually is not
ready for consumption,
is never
love, actually is Mr. Bean selling you jewellery in a bag that
cannot represent the general public,
power, love, actually
sustainability and perpetual validation, in an ever decreasing
boredom, between
the spaces of longevity versus
moves between the spaces of desire and fulfillment, it isn’t
Love, actually?
When Harry Met Sally
for Cara Ng
1
I don’t remember meeting, or if we were really friends. That’s what I want to remember. I know other things: the soft tonguing of bread before you bit into a sandwich, the bright flashes before waking next to you, and you floating down from the tallest building I can imagine. But blockages compromise. Men and women can’t be friends. And can be friends. It depends on the man and woman. It depends on how badly that man thinks his dick deserves to plug a woman. If his only goal in life is to never see the light in the eyes of someone outside of sex. It depends on how much you reminisce. It depends if the meeting felt like it took place in a conference room. No one declares a list that opens with I love you because, no one can stop and start their life. People forget the beginnings. I want to appreciate why this feeling is familiar, why I forget.
2
Sometimes I think about trying to get back to a feeling. But it’s so far away I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to recreate it. Instead I light 20 cigarettes, lay them in the snow around me, and try to smoke them all before they melt into their holes, until my head is so light this feeling dissipates.
3
What if Harry didn’t meet anyone? What if Sally met Harry? What if switching words would transform the outcome so drastically that Bruno Kirby played the leading man he deserved to be? What if all that cute stuff was with me and Bruno Kirby, the two of us stealing scenes and each other’s hearts and maybe pies from windowsills. His moustache brushing against me. This is why there’s entertainment, escape, fantasy. I can revel in the forgetting and relive meetups in my mind. To me they’re real. Bruno Kirby watching me fake an orgasm and commending me on my skills, laughing along, acknowledging me as clever, sexual, complicated. Not an insult. Bruno reassuring me that I could be out there, but he’s here. I will meow for him. Bruno keeping up with me. Bruno. Kirby. Breathless.
4
You said we were never friends and we will never be lovers and we are nothing to each other and it was easy to believe you. It was easy.
Five-Star Rating
Blindsides you with its charm. As ephemeral as a talk show. Meg Ryan. Haltingly absurd. Smart, sexy, and other dating clichés. Early animosity leads to a predictable ending. A modern take on something else. A series of misunderstandings and soiled T-shirts. Unreal dialogue, wardrobe choices. Love and hate in equal measure. Bristles with implausibility. Literally heartbreaking. Literally heartwarming. Literally vomit-inducing. Pulses. Laughs in your face. Banal. Just like real relationships. Sets up unrealistic expectations. Doesn’t hold a candle to plot devices. A tale as old as times you don’t remember and references at least two years too old. Some ugly person steals the show. Absent of Meg Ryan. Thumbs-up because they’re broken. Puns. Assembly-line epiphanies. Where is Meg Ryan?
The Movie Will Be a Disappointment
What’s happening
onscreen isn’t relatable.
These people are moving
around too much.
Bodies in motion, kissing,
frolicking, trying.
Why is no one in the corner
crying, covered in spit,
in nostalgia, in blankets
sweat-glued to old T-shirts
melded to a body that hasn’t moved
in days and days? Why is no one
covered in a protective shell,
hooded in a paranoid stasis?
The part that makes sense
comes before the movie
bashes us in the face and ears, before
even the ads, quizzes, trailers,
stuff to make us care
about movies. The part
where someone spends too much
on popcorn, butter, chocolate,
soda the size of 20 hearts, before
stepping into a dark room to forget.
What’s Happening Onscreen
Isn’t Relatable
No one ever flew through traffic and stopped you
from getting on that plane. No one ever ran after you
down the street to tell you they love you.
No one held a boom box outside
your window. No one flew across the world
for you. No one wrote you a song.
No one wrote you a poem. No one followed you
to Rome or pretended to be the man you were looking for.
No one took a bet on you. No one tried to lose
you. No one gave up their job for you.
No one wrote an article about you and fell
in love in the process. No one showed up
at your apartment and climbed the fire escape.
No one recruited David Bowie to sing to you on an airplane.
Someone did kiss you during a sunset,
pulling you in as night pulled the sun down.
no one ever lifted you out of bed
when you drank until sorrow melted
off your skin, frost turned to beads of spring,
sorrys dripping from sweat, fever
still telling you something is wrong.
Harold and Maude
for Laura Matwichuck
The earth is my body; my head is in the stars.
– Maude
Common ground. Dirt.
Love can grow in the dust-up
of a car crashing over a cliff,
the forced peace of a gravesite.
Find the things that might make
another person unhappy,
that make this person
want to toss their arms around you.
Lessons she weaves
out of long silver braids.
She makes magic from reality,
silk scarves adorning
a 79-year-old body. Young women
are too scared to face black humour,
existentialist self-immolation,
consensual, sensual May-December.
Enjoy life through culture, not marriage,
fight for kisses and thievery.
Not harsh, but radical. She’s gentle,
breaks down flower metaphors
without being trite.
She makes us root for death.
New Year’s Eve
is a poor (wo)man’s
Valentine’s Day
which is a poor (wo)man’s
Love Actually
which is fucking poor.
Don’t bother
trying to force
your tongue
down
someone’s throat
at midnight.
Don’t watch this movie, either.
Soundtrack
If he plays that song that means we’re going to be together forever; if he plays the other I’ll wilt into the pavement, if he stops at the chorus I’ll turn to goo and live in the sewers with cartoon turtles. If the album from seventh grade plays, the
heartbreak will look like it did then: tiny bathroom stalls full of tissue bouquets soaked in tears, a first period just before first period, mean girls bitching about your sadness ruining their day. If that song comes on while we’re walking into a Moxie’s, our wedding will be in the spring surrounded by peonies and anthropomorphic squirrels; but if it’s Burger King then he takes out a hollow sparrow, stuffs it full of locks of my hair, and begs it to fly, fly away while I stand by watching and saying over and over, “It’s dead, it’s over.”
Everything Is Bad Choices
that Make Me Feel Good
1
Start with sex. With acrobatic, cup-my-balls sex.
When morning comes after he does, exit.
You could do an impression of a penis, elbows
jutting out, one eye closed; if you practise
enough, you can really shape your
arms to be balls, and look like a dick.
All retail jobs are about discreetly revealing lifelong
problems to strangers, so you can try it at work.
Your co-worker looks like a Noxema girl,
while you get better at looking like a penis.
2
When you came along, dancing on painted white road
lines to prove sobriety, I ticketed
you, but ripped it up. You had more than
a broken tail light, wormy-face, broken
hearted. When you caught me behind the glass
of the corner-store fridge with my bag of carrots
I thought about the way the cold
from the fridge feels familiar, the late
nights of insomnia, for all of the times
we couldn’t figure it out. When you
woke up in my bed, I pushed you the way I always do,
triggering your failed love. Now you drive
past my house in the night, your car
a ghost, haunting the street,
until you left me a cake in the shape
of a carrot, with the words “I’m sorry” iced on top.
3
I think about which is more pathetic: solo
baking or a broken bakery dream; or
fucking a handsome wiener
versus dating a monogamous worm-face.
Everything is bad choices that make me feel good
for a time, or good choices that confuse. Even a meal
isn’t simple, nor is choosing a dress. Classy-shit
bridal shops produce severe anxiety, sweaty memories.
Sometimes proving a point
is more important than facing the truth,
even if being right means diarrhea. Even if it means losing
love, a best friend, lunch. Going broke
as a bridesmaid is par for the course;
moving in with your mom is optional, but
being confronted with flour, eggs, butter, and dreams –
that ruins a solid night of fun.
4
Punch a giant cookie, your rage
the shade of a bleached asshole.
When you hit bottom, you were greasy hair,
you were a sad Muppet penis in sweatpants.
Sometimes sanity is a woman who’s stolen
a litter of puppies breaking you open on a couch,
forcing you to fight. You had to unfurl arms, unball
fists to stop shaping yourself like a dick,
and slap life back. Leave a cake on life’s doorstep, fix your
tail lights and wash your hair, stay.
5
Hold on for one more day.
Credits
Dreamland: “A Series of Romantic Comedies That Could Never Be Made,” ed. Jeremy Stewart
Matrix: “Five-Star Rating,” ed. Jon Paul Fiorentino
Matrix: “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” and “She’s All That,” ed. Leah Horlick and Billeh Nickerson
New Poetry: “Romantic Comedies for Young Girls,” ed. George Murray
Plenitude: “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” ed. Matthew Walsh and Andrea Routley
Editor
Sachiko Murakami
Trailer Director
Shay Wilson
Photography
Tina Kulic
Illustrations
Alana Green
Marketing
Zoe Grams
Megan Jones
The Talon Team
Kevin Williams
Ann-Marie Metten
Chloë Filson
Les Smith
Spencer Williams
Greg Gibson
Vicki Williams
With special thanks
to our friends and family, to our many mentors, and to our past and current lovers.
Blooper Reel
You had me at hello, this cinder-fucking-rella
date that never ended. 50 of them to be exact, it
wasn’t until the wedding was cancelled, you
left, beds are meant for bodies to be
lifted out of. I can’t live without you, or
complete yourself, break up in the right
direction, you’re just a virgin, fill the parts
of your body with other men, ones who
wink when you fall, ones who can sew
stories or dip bodies and dance on stars.
You sink into a bathtub, frothy bubbles
coat your body, your love, your ki-ki-ki-kiss.
Sweet home wherever-the-fuck-you-are
when you bend and snap, dream
of the man in the moon, the only man
who’s not a true commitment-phobe.
We all go through phases when we question
our own commitment to Reese. We come back around.
Just like after the fight, the breakdown
over something slight that upsets feelings
like a tipped cow. So, my boyfriend died
but he came back to life and wants to get together,
I just really thought I would be able to
spell my way out of this one. If I imagined
my perfect husband, he would have the face
of Ryan Gosling, the body of Ryan Reynolds, the smile
of Ryan Phillippe, but the spirit of Meg Ryan.
One time I was in a romantic comedy
with someone over email exchanges, he was a
prince, but he took all of the money from my
bank accounts and never called back.
Love is feral, I fear Will Ferrell in my dreams, fear
love isn’t something for everyone, Farrah Fawcett
feathered hair filling my lungs when you speak
of forever. Someone bought a flight and a fancy
hotel room to see me, and I still think about
how I never saved you from depression. Marisa Tomei
couldn’t help but fall for Robert Downey Jr. in Rome
because substance abuse feels like love.
True, sad me, that felt no, like no
no one would airport-love me the way
baggage claim does. Two, had me, at below
the moonlight, he said there was a condom
remember how love is a broken condom. You,
bad me, that yellow stain around my fingers
from chain-smoking. Learn to be more indifferent
than other girls. Like, duh. Romance makes
you feel so stupid. Like, why? Like, what? Like, who
the hell is this guy standing in front of a girl
when the girl is me and all I really want
is to forget being sad is a thing that might happen.
It’s so like me, shoving slice after slice
of pizza in my face with mystical intentions
even though I only believe in the higher power
of Kristen Wiig. I love my own hair,
thick like The Rock’s arms, shiny like Gwyneth’s
face, healthy like my hatred for Ashton Kutcher.
Extensions o
f us sit waiting to make out,
brush lips and moustaches, in some swish set-decorated
house so unaffordable, unattainable. Not messed up.
Dirty underwear the reality of a day spent being alive,
also, the contents of your misfiring man-brain,
body sludge, goo. It wasn’t obvious to you
that my discomfort wasn’t love, because you
didn’t catch on I was uncomfortable at all.
Bitch face, stink eye, ignore-you-blank-stare,
none of it indicated how clearly I wanted
you to step back, off, under a train.
So obvious that Jenny Slate is my one true pairing.
A pair of shoes won’t make it any easier to have sex
in any city. Tottering along in love is to be unbalanced,
to forget. Why am I here again? That old thing again
with problematic memory stuff. Awkward love confessions
in real life are things people want to forget. In movies
everyone is AWWWWing hard on the inside. I want to be kissed
outside of even gross places – dumpsters, steak houses, banks.
Money tricks girls like me for the first two acts. Two
weeks’ notice for your job, but men
want to turn women into buildings that they
build up and tear down. Hugh had me; that fellow
knew all the right words in an English accent. He
left his job for me, changed his cheating ways, now
builds community centres for my vagina. Working Girl
is the one time the executive and the secretary
should have swept important papers, nameplates,
monogrammed pens and all the business
from the mahogany desk. YOU ARE A MAN,
he says to Amanda Bynes. A man, duh, I get it!
This was supposed to be about
becoming great at college-level North American soccer,
so that you could go on to great things such as
low-level leagues that pay well
below minimum wage, but you fell in love.
“Conan O’Brien looks like a carrot.” That’s a double negative.
You’re a double negative. Belief in a soulmate so that
maybe there is only one in seven billion.
Crazy. We meet around a bar, soak
up divorce. Hey girl, gender is a construct, heartbreak
is better than cancer. We all fall in love, like assholes.