I S S U EN U M B E R

O N E

hilt noun \’hilt\

Definition of hilt

: a handle especially of a sword or dagger

— to THE HILT1: to the very limit : completely <the farm was mortgaged to the hilt>2: with nothing lacking <played the role to the hilt>

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CONTENTSLetters from the “Editors”

R E G U L A R SGOODWORDS:So I Went Downtown the Other Day“I operate under the assumption that things make sense, which they frequently don’t, so I fall down a lot.”

S H O R T S

DOWN- drink oatstraw when needed“The doctor prescribes Attagirl, promising its daily ingestion to be the charm that will end the mystery.”

My Brother’s Keeper“The silver ring shone with a youthful rebelliousnes thatI felt should have been mine, not hers. I felt like she hadabandoned her motherhood.”

Caution as Cowadice“Maybe they ran too far for me to hear. Maybe someonehelped them. Maybe someone caught them.”

P O E T R YVALLEY CRUISER DIGEST: FOUND POETRYStrange fACTSThree young malesMistakesAnimal ActionCount ‘emImpaired PerceptionGrad Party Action

Time

Wake in Fright

a r t & a r t i s t s

I n f o & T h a n k sNext issue’s theme, where to find us and other things!

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2012

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F R O m T H E E D I T O R SI’m an adult living with my parents because I can’t support myself.

I could’ve tried harder to become a designer. I could’ve stuck with the dozens of hobbies I had as a kid and become a ballerina, or a pianist, or a professional, I don’t know, boxer. I had rage issues as a child. But that’s beside the point. I could’ve stayed in school and got my PhD in literature like I planned in first year. But I didn’t. I didn’t stick with any of that stuff so why dwell on the fact that I didn’t pursue any of it?

Once I graduated university I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I went to school simply because I was brainwashed into thinking that’s what I was supposed to do after high school. I loved university, don’t get me wrong, but when you take an arts degree...well that shit does NOT prepare you for the real world.

So I’m graduated. Great! Now what? Everyone was throwing ideas at me but never stopped to ask me what it was I really wanted to do—not that I would have had an answer—but it was nice to be asked. So I went out and found any job I could while I took the summer to figure it all out.

I eventually moved back home and lived the life of unemployment trying to get jobs I thought I wanted. Application after application I heard back from no one. Getting no responses eventually led me to thinking I was completely useless. I went through hardcore depression and thinking I was a failure of a human being. Who was I if I didn’t use my degree? Who was I if I didn’t have a career well over a year out of university? I felt like a complete piece of shit.

That much time to sit and think, however, gave me a lot of time to reflect on who I was, am, and want to be. I’ve realized that I don’t give a shit what I do as long as I’m happy doing it; and I don’t give a shit about what anyone thinks about what I’m doing as long as it makes me happy. A career’s not going to make me happy so why do I need one? It’s total bullshit. We should be working simply as a means to an end. It shouldn’t become the thing that defines us as human beings.

Whenever I find myself making excuses or feeling the need to justify where I’m at in my life I have to remind myself to stop looking back and seeing myself as a failure compared to who I thought I’d be. I need to get over that shit and deal with the now! As long as I’m doing all I can to eventually be where I want to be no one can give me shit for that. Fuck ‘em! There’s no timeline for life. It’s just life. We all make choices and we all choose how to live with them. I thought I was alone in what I was going through until I started talking to people about it and realized most young adults...and even not so young adults...are all just trying to find their way in the world.

The Hilt sets out to make people realize we all have problems and make people realize they’re not alone in their struggles. Perspective makes everything make more sense and the best way to do that is share our stories. Whether it be life observations, introspectives, or just something creative. As long as it makes you think about life and maybe even change how you think about life then we’ve done our job.

Lindsay Smith Editor

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Life... am I right?

Joshua DuchesneEditor-In-Chief

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These poems have been created with verbatim phrases from a selection of passages from the King’s County Cruiser Reports in the summer of 2010 found in The Kings County Advertiser and The Kings County Register, NS. Spacing and capitalization are mine. With thanks to Wendy Elliott for reporting the words.

Andrea Schwenke WyileAndrea Schwenke

particularly enjoys books that combine visual and verbal texts,

so she is delighted to have illustrations accompany her poems. She teaches children’s

literature in the Annapolis Valley, NS. However, her MA in creative writing, buried relic

of decades past, has been trying to assert itself. Her first story, “Common Signs of

Spring” is in The Nashwaak Review (Vol. 28/29 – Summer/Fall 2012).

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MistakesAbout 11 pm an Individualentered a store carryingA Baseball BatStaff were Alarmed

The person was merely en route Home from a game of Ball

Reported concern about an Older Mandressed in Pyjamas

Police were able to determine the man was East Indian wearing Traditional Clothing

a possible animal abuse complaint turned out to be a Very Old Dog

The Delivery Manfor the Grapevine was mistaken for a prowlerwhile on evening rounds

report of loiteringin a Coldbrook parking lotat 12:50 am turned out to be a rendez-vous

RCMP investigated reportsof GunShots but the Noise was from FiReWorKs

A resident reported a childtrying to drown a cat in a pool Police were told by the parent of the five-year-old it was attempting to give the animal a bath

Warning issued

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G O O D W O R D Ss o i w e n t d o w n t o w n t h e o t h e r d a y

So I went downtown the other day.

It was a Saturday night and a friend of mine was having a birthday party. Actually it was a friend of a friend, but it doesn’t make a difference to the story so let’s say she’s my friend. She’s this tiny white girl with a passion for salsa dancing and I don’t know if it was her idea or her girlfriends’ but we all ended up going to Mana Bar where it was salsa night. Perfect. Lots of fun. Some of us could dance, some of us couldn’t. It’s very funny going out like that with people you don’t know because those first impressions are absolutely shattered as soon as you hit the dance floor. But that’s not what this is about. Point is, I was out, it’s a Saturday night, and we’re at a salsa club so there’s no way we’re leaving before 2, which is a problem because I don’t live downtown and I don’t drive. You can guess what’s coming next.

Transit; it is simultaneously the best and worst part of being a pedestrian in Toronto. It also stops running at

1:30 in the morning which means anyone taking the subway home has to leave the party early – lame—or you can plan ahead and get a ride, or you can crash somewhere. Here’s my problem: that night, my ride was crashing at his work – where he was going to get up and work at 7am – so I could either leave the party and be lame, which I spend enough of my time doing, or I could crash with him at his work and get up at 7 and catch the subway home. Great plan. I’m all set. Only one problem: Saturday night party means Sunday morning

transit and for some ludicrous reason subway service doesn’t start until 9am on Sunday morning. I didn’t bother to look this up in advance because, as you can tell from my prior use of adjectives, I consider even the idea of late subway service on Sunday morning to be ludicrous, foolish, unreasonable, and I’m a reasonable person. I operate under the assumption that things make sense, which they frequently don’t, so I fall down a lot. Only this one irks me because why the hell should I have to sleep in on a Sunday morning? Are the TTC employees all at home having their eggs and bacon while I’m standing around in the falling snow with an expression of confusion and disgust as I stare at the little sign telling me I can’t go home that way as my cold hand tugs listlessly at the door to my warm transit-filled future? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame the TTC workers. I hope they enjoy their late starts. I know I would. But I was cold and I was tired and that wasn’t the sort of Sunday morning surprise I’ve always wanted.

But I’m not one to hold a grudge. I bundled up my insufficient evening wear – I was expecting a spicy latin fiesta, not an arctic trek through the Swiss Alps – I bundled up, and ran through my options. Find a breakfast place and hole up, or take the Blue Line bus to Kipling. As Alec Baldwin says, A-Good-Plan-Today-is-Better-Than-a-Great-Plan-Tomorrow, so I hopped the bus meant for drunk people and early airline riders and headed out to Kipling station. I got there around 8, 8:30, where a bus was supposed to be waiting to take me North. Only there was no bus. The Blue Line didn’t even drop me off at the station. The driver pulled over at Timmy’s to get a coffee. So frustrating!

So after I got a coffee, two breakfast sandwiches, and a small box of Timbits I decided to just walk into the no entry area of the bus depot. Only when I got there I chickened out. I convinced myself that I didn’t live that far north, and I could easily walk to Rexdale. It couldn’t be that far.

“ I h o p p e d t h e b u s m e a n t f o r d r u n k p e o p l e a n d e a r l y

a i r l i n e r i d e r s a n d h e a d e d o u t t o K i p l i n g s t a t i o n . ”

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It’s frigging far.

If I hadn’t been picked up by the Kipling bus that miraculously stopped at a red light on the other side of the road, I would probably still be there, trudging through light fluffy deceptive snow, slipping on black ice and spilling my coffee all over the place. But I’m not bitter. I was just so glad to be inside that warm smelly bus, sitting beside an old man who might never have brushed his teeth and whose beard seemed to be stained the colour of urine, which begged the question of – you know what? It didn’t matter. I revelled in the uncomfortable closeness of a complete stranger because I was on a TTC bus heading home. Is there any better feeling in the world? TTC, don’t ever change. Maybe add early Sunday service. Just saying.

ADAM SNOWBALL is an artist, formerly trained, who is currently not working in his field but will be working in a forest for the next three months in New Zealand, bird-watching. He’s spent the last few years working in different unrelated jobs, but always in the GTA. Country born-and-bred, he’s discovered he may be more of a city-boy than he had ever aimed to be, or maybe he’s just impressionable. He enjoys the outdoors and working with his hands, but he’s developed a growing appreciation for fashion, which he likes to dabble in by designing costumes for superheroes and various performers in stories that he hopes one day to illustrate in the form of best-selling graphic novels. He also is something of a Magoo, so he tends to end up with hilarious misunderstandings. See editors for more information, or anecdotal evidence.

Jane Kerrison is a twenty-four-year-old who writes fiction for children and young adults, as

well as short fiction and poetry. Jane has a beautiful Maltese/

Shih-tzu named Sonnet who is her loyal sidekick and the subject

of a picture book she is self-publishing with one of her best

friends. Jane lives with fibromyalgia and endometriosis and hopes to

use her writing to help people understand and cope with chronic illness. She is an avid reader who is almost permanently attached to a book. She also loves photography,

science fiction, movies and tv, yoga, music, cooking and

screenwriting.

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Three Young MalesA noise complaintbrought police to Pleasant Street three underage inebriated youth

now have parentsliable for damage to a vehicleafter they were caughtthrowing rocks

Three young males were reported

at 1:18 amwhile trying to uproot a tree

At 2 amplaying tennisat a recreation facility

wearing gorilla masks in a truck

tossing nails off a roof on Main StreetA passing pedestrian was scraped went for a tetanus shot

Trio disappeared when police arrived

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13

You, the person who believes that there is plenty

of time left to grow up and do the right thing,

you are the person Death smiles coyly at.

I knew on some level that I had grown up quick, in that

way that makes people wonder how you didn’t end up as

a bona-fide fuck-up. At 20 years old, I had experienced

traumas that the majority of my cohort never had, and

never would. Those who knew me well knew this about

me; those who did not know me probably figured I was

overly opinionated and entitled, maybe even considered

me a bit of a bitch. But I knew that my independence and

strength of character came from seeing and hearing the

types of things which delinquent characters in films and

books are exposed to. Employers, my family members,

and my close friends commended me for my survivor

mentality. In many ways, I felt untouchable. I felt lucky.

I did not owe anything to anyone.

I had, for as long as I was receiving those (ill-deserved?)

compliments, attributed them to my desire to be the

exact opposite of my mother, to my need to counteract

her poisonous DNA that coursed through me. The

darkest dungeons of my memory seemed to be her

construction. I was certain that my resolute and self-

determined personality was formed in spite of her, that

she had no involvement in creating any of my positive

attributes, other than long eyelashes and full lips. I was

20, and I had not spoken to her in over three years;

the last time we had seen one another had been in the

county courthouse when my maternal aunt and her

husband were declared legal guardians over the “minor

in question.” My mom was wearing scrubs; she had

been on a break from the hospital where she worked.

I noticed a ring in the center of her lip, and it enraged

me. The silver ring shone with a youthful rebelliousness

that I felt should have been mine, not hers. I felt like she

had abandoned her motherhood.

It was not until years later, when I pictured those

moments repeatedly, that I considered how she felt that

day, standing in the court with her arms folded over

her chest, her shoulders squared the same way mine do

when I am trying to appear tall and important. How did

MY BROTHER'S KEEPER14

she feel, watching as her oldest daughter, her first-born,

left the courtroom without speaking a word to her,

after barely looking her in the eye? I wonder if she felt

anything similar to how she felt when my grandmother

left her in Trinidad, taking my two young aunts with her.

I wonder, now, if my grandma and I caused her a similar

heartbreak. I wonder, whenever the rain reminds me of

that day, if my mother ever forgave either of us.

There are mental snapshots of my mother that look

something like love. I remember ice cream for breakfast

on Friday and trips to the bookstore on her paydays. Still,

the tint of violence in these portraits releases lead into

the bottom of my belly, anchoring my anger. The smell

of vodka, the yelling, the sting of whatever object was

closest to her across my skin, they fill in the background

of my memory and feel like fear, as uncomfortable as

sleet down the back of my jacket in January.

That day in court, I said nothing to her.

Some three years later, the image of her in those sea

green scrubs is razor-sharp, looping in my head like a

DVD title screen sequence. I am in the back of my aunt’s

SUV, staring at the back of heads. They belong to my

grandma and my mother’s sisters: all the women who

raised me in ways my mother did not. Or could not. My

best friend sits next to me holding my hand. The weight

and pressure of her grip is the only reminder that I

am still in my body. We are on our way to deliver the

news to my younger sister that I received only an hour

before: your mom was found dead. My sister and I had

the same first thought; we were both pretty certain that

our mother, the most volatile person we had known,

had taken her own life. We were right, in some ways.

We both seemed to want some sort of melodrama, as if

somehow it would make it more comprehensible. Her

death was just too simple to choke down. We wanted

more to chew on.

I needed there to be more to the story. I had been

building my mother’s death in my mind since I was

thirteen, as morbid as that is. I always knew my mother’s

final act of abandonment would be her self-inflicted

death. The premonition always foretold an untimely

death that would be gruesome, like something out of

the crime shows I’ve always loved. My thirteen year old

self was right in all the wrong ways: it was untimely,

but so perfect in the way only irony can create. I

had traveled to Trinidad just two months before my

mom’s death. Trinidad- a place that was symbolic, in

my imagination, of all I did not understand about my

mother. I stayed with my great aunt and uncle, the

people who had raised my mother when my grandma

moved to California. Uncle Cyril, a man I was forbidden

to ask about during my childhood. Mom never said what

it was that he had done wrong to her but her hatred of

the man was palpable. I found him endlessly interesting.

He was a renowned reverend, a writer, and a reader. He

and my aunt spoke of my mother constantly during my

two week stay in their home. Their words illuminated

bits and pieces of my mom I had never known. They told

me what a clever troublemaker my mother had been,

how she both infuriated and impressed her school’s

principal. They recounted for me how my mother could

remember whole sermons after hearing them once. I

was fascinated, captivated and achingly curious for

every detail of her childhood they could remember. I

caught them, more than a few times, eyeing me with a

wistful, away look, like they were seeing someone from

the past. A smirk played on their lips; they saw mom

in my walk, heard her in my laugh, were reminded of

her fire in the way I expressed myself. Never before

had anyone likened me to my mother in a positive way;

usually people remarked on my striking resemblance to

my mother, always in a way that made me ashamed.

I returned home with my head drowning in these new

tales of my mother. I wanted to call her. But I didn’t.

I hadn’t forgiven her. Each time I tried, the eight-year

“HER PANCREAS WAS INFLAMED, HER LIVER FULL OF FLUID LIKE A DROWNED MOB-STRIKE VICTIM.”

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old in me tugged on my shirt and pointed towards the

memory of the time mom said she’d kill us, chop us in

tiny pieces and hide us in the rocks, the way our druggie,

stranger of a biological father had taught her. The eight-

year-old looked at me with eyes that silently said, “she

didn’t love us; she left us.” It was only years later that the

eight-year-old understood and was pacified.

My mother’s death was gruesome, but only to those

who knew the tiniest of details, like which of her organs

had failed and were distended, or what the fluid inside

of her stomach had looked like. Her bodily systems had

given up on her. Or maybe she had given up on them.

The liver was too full of triglycerides, a common effect

of too much booze. Hepatic Steatosis, if you’re into the

terminology. Her pancreas was inflamed, her liver full

of fluid like a drowned mob-strike victim. She had died

alone in her apartment. How long she had been there,

face down in her own blood, nobody knew for sure.

The autopsy determined that rates of decomposition

suggested she’d been there somewhere between three

and seven days. I read the autopsy aloud to my sixteen-

year-old sister, doing my best to skip the parts I felt

were too descriptive, even though I secretly clung

to each word and phrase; I made mental notes of the

terminology I hadn’t learned in physiology, words like

“edema.” I found myself picturing the maggots in her

mouth, the patches of skin that had begun to slip, and it

helped me to detach myself from her, like she was a case

study in a biology textbook. Even the coroner advised

my grandma not to view her body; it was said she was

unrecognizable.

We all joked in a bitter way of the one part of the report

that we identified with, the description of the way

mom’s nails and toenails had been painted: turquoise,

with black tiger stripes on the thumbs and big toes.

Even though she had died a drunkard’s undignified

death, alone, without really knowing her children, she

had still been her. She had still been Karen Alicia Jadoo.

Her nails were still painted.

At the end of her funeral, one of my mother’s friends

approached me with a searching look in her eyes, which

made it difficult for me to look directly at them. I cannot

remember her name, but I will never forget what she

said to me: she told me that my mother always knew

that her kids were better off without her. She was right.

My mother hadn’t abandoned us. She had freed us from

being victims of the poison she herself could not escape.

It wasn’t until I was suffocating under a thick regret,

both my own and that of my family’s that I realized I had

had a reason to ask for my mother’s forgiveness.

My Brother’s Keeper: I have these words in Latin tattooed

on the inside of my right forearm. Now, the spot tingles

faintly when I concentrate on it. My three younger

siblings and I all originate from different fathers; our

mother, even if absent for most of our lives, was our

unifying anchor. Now that she is somewhere in the

intangible ether, my shoulders sit squarely underneath

a responsibility to make sure that my two sisters and

brother learn to forgive our mother. Being an adult now

means that I am the curator of my mother’s memory. I

try to smile at them the way our mother smiled.

KIRSTEN JADOO is a California native who

swapped coasts in order to take a bite of the Big

Apple. She is a writer interested in everything from

food and travel to environment and politics. The

eldest of four children, she holds family very near

to her heart, and would be an incomplete mess

without her closest friends. She is magazine-

obsessed, a lover of short stories, and an avid

movie watcher.

“HER NAILS WERE STILL PAINTED”

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Grad Party ActionThree graduation partiesrequired police presenceTwo women got into a fightThree chaperones got fed up They reported mayhem and a desire to leave their bucket of car keysThe Free for-all had quieted down when officers arrivedabout 40 people still partying

Despite the fact 500 students attended10 parent chaperones notedone fight and a malewho lost hisshoes in a swamp

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SUBMISSION GUIDLINES AT

thehiltmagazine.com

Strange fACTSStrange fACTS

Complaint of a man driving a lawn tractordowntown

At 1:28 amthe sound of a boxing bagbeing punched repeatedlyresulted in a call to police

Two reports of mailboxes filledwithfoaminsulationcame in

An unknown, elderly male graBBeda young woman’sbutt ocksin a storeAnd complimented heron her phys ique

Thieves used a magnetto steal cashout of a light-house shapedwishing wellat the wharf inhalls harbour

Someonewent through the drive-through at a fast food outlet repeatedlyordering itemsnotonthemenu

A 91-year-old manasked a woman in a storeif she wantedto see hispea g nuts r O W

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I thought I heard the word “help”. It was around 2:30 or 3 AM and I had only woken up enough to rip my share of the covers back

from my girlfriend.

There it was again. Someone screaming “HELP!” somewhere in my neighborhood. I live in one of the most densely populated areas in the city and as such, seedy situations aren’t uncommon. My car was broken into just the other day, for example. In the two years I’ve lived here though I have never been so disturbed by this person’s sincere and terrified screams for help.

What’s more disturbing to me is that I didn’t do anything. I only lied there thinking about getting up, finding things to wear, and searching for this person in the cold and the dark. I thought about what could possibly be happening to them that they couldn’t think of anything else to do in the downtown area of the biggest city in the country than to yell. I thought for a moment that maybe there was an accident and they had no phone, but as I listened, I noticed the voice getting fainter. They must have been running. Running away from something threatening.

I continued to listen to this person presumably run for their life until I couldn’t hear them anymore. Maybe they ran too far for me to hear. Maybe someone helped them.

Maybe someone caught them. I fell back asleep thinking how even if I could catch up and find this person, I don’t know what I’m running into. I could be putting myself in danger too.

I didn’t tell my girlfriend the next morning. I was afraid of what she might say. “How could I not have helped!” “How could you be expected to put yourself in danger?” I don’t know what reaction would have been worse. Maybe, “How could you have fallen back asleep.”

What’s funny is that this is the second time I’ve been put in this situation. About 5 years ago I stayed with my mom for a weekend just outside the downtown core, on the lake. She lived in a condo complex in a nice neighborhood which about 3 blocks west became not so nice.

It was summer, around midnight, and I heard someone yelling “help”. Without a thought I threw my shoes on and ran to help. No keys, no cell phone, nothing but shoes and a mission. I found a twenty something man across the street from the complex. He told me there was a car somewhere trying to run him over. I didn’t feel too skeptical as it was obvious he was seriously afraid and he didn’t look crazy or high.

A car came squealing out of nowhere, mounted the curb and

aimed for the man then suddenly turned away, disappearing around a corner. It must have noticed me, a witness, almost too late.

A young couple came out to help as well. Out of the hundreds of people in the complex, we were the only folks to come out. I remember being shocked by that. Now, I’m one of those people who stay safely in their homes.

Now I feel conflicted. Is it worth putting myself in potentially mortal danger to help someone in need? Morality may say one thing and logic may say another. The only thing I’m sure of is that despite his lack of planning, I’m proud of my past self for running out to help. Was it stupid that I had run out like that five years ago unprepared? Yes, I think it was, but I don’t’ feel stupid about it and I still don’t. Now, five years later, I feel sorry and ashamed for not running out to help again, no matter how unwise it might have been.

JUDI DENCH is not this author’s real name though it’s one they enjoy. Judi has been keeping an on and off relationship with thier journal for years and though they enjoy stories and reading, they often find writing tedious. Maybe they aren’t doing it right? Don’t answer that.

C A U T I O NA SC O W A R D I C E

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Animal ActionA woman in Wolfvillehad a little white dogrun into her home at 10:54 pmIt did nothave a tag

Two young dogsroughed upTwo childrenon the beach at Blomidon

A black and white horsenamed Chicowas reported on Maple Ridge Roadnear WolfvilleA blonde gelding was looseon east Main St in BerwickA deer hit a car on Highway 101near Auburn

Dogs were left in carsin Greenwood and Berwickprompting concern for their safety

Resident woke up to find a window openAnd a grey fluffy intruder in the home

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MAY There have been signs for some years. Strange feelings that overcome you more frequently. Brain tingling. Unnerving. And then one night you come completely undone but don’t quite recognize this because you mistake champagne for the culprit; so it happens again, this time leading you to wonder, very seriously, if this is the end and to worry at the inconvenience and grief this will cause. As it turns out, it’s just a panic attack. Turns out tons of people have these. Obviously this is why ’don’t have a panic attack’ is such a common throw-away phrase. Right up there with ‘don’t kill yourself.’ Undoubtedly phrases to offset deep fears because the physiology of panic is profound. You know you shouldn’t be driving a vehicle on a dark highway in this state.

JUNE The balance of your body has tipped. All semblance of control has flown the coop, leaving you one ruffled chicken. Incredulous, you seek medical advice. Of course the tests proclaim you the picture of health. The doctor prescribes Attagirl, promising its daily ingestion to be the charm that will end the mystery. But you want the truth which is harder to find. The pharmacist is shocked by the prescription you fill as a security measure. You make appointments with all the paths, seeking an alternate route. Between B vitamins, omega oils, and copious cups of ginger tea, you try to plant some stakes for stability. You take up serious snacking with a view to protein. You try to stop thinking, to surrender to silence, to enjoy being. This is a steep shale path.

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When the osteopath tells you you’ve found your bottom, she confirms that something drastic is up. That said, she sends you off with instructions to sleep for four days. Deep as you are in physical uncertainty, you wonder if this is really as low as it could go. Certainly is deep enough, thanks, and there’s plenty of paradox thrown into the well as you repeatedly feel like you might just float away, your dizzy head a balloon, your body growing faint, your heart suddenly sprinting, you hoping there is no actual finish line. Like you’ve been plugged into a giant generator and some maniac flipped the excess switch and your arms start to go numb and your legs shake and a great unease coils through you. These are not the dumps, not the blues; you are not out. What kind of breakdown leads you to your bottom? What piles up or chips away over the years to accumulate such supra-gravitational force? Your soul fragile; sucked, pulled. The dark of night drags on, your mind and heart race, your body wired for flight from itself, the past, something you should try to name. Residual grief? Loss, close calls, anger, hurt, exhaustion, guilt, denial…Who can sleep for four days? Amazingly, on the fourth day you sleep the most and the soundest. From there you start up the long ladder to a new moon.

JULY In your haste, you think you’ve made considerable progress and might be well enough to travel. But your body isn’t finished schooling your mind, so then the serious weeping sets in and you develop some sort of bronchial manifestation of sorrow that exercises your diaphragm, disrupts your still fragile sleep and opens your throat like a grater. You never know when you’ll be overcome. Despite having sailed the seas of grief with a sibling suicide, there’s nothing familiar about this territory except for all the practice you are getting. You draw with your left hand, favouring the abstract and flowers. You write: but I like myself…. You practice not thinking and wonder if a bohdi tree would help. Yoga with eyes closed encourages the tide. What is it you need to figure out?You concoct motherwort tincture (bitter) and drink oatstraw infusions (a mild green taste); you bathe in Epsom salts and oats, willing all these things to help.

AUGUST All travel is a trial. Will you be confined to this valley for life? You’ve sent your children off on what is no longer a family holiday. You work at making

local discoveries, walking in new places, convinced menopause is around the next bend. But the naturopath names adrenal exhaustion. Suddenly this diagnosis seems to apply to much of the population—you notice ads for supplements and tonics everywhere. No more java jolts; these days you just smell the coffee. You now doubt the concept of normality, yet bit by bit you rise towards its semblance, leaving the bottom down there, another valuable experience you wouldn’t want to repeat, a physical particulate of remarkable mass and magnitude. As the months reel by, your reality shifts a bit here, a bit there, a bit everywhere.

YEARS LATERThe truth of this experience is past, but the memory of the ice trickle in your brain and the shrill steam-engine whistle crushing your chest keeps your eyes keen for sinkholes ahead.

ANDREA SCHWENKE particularly enjoys books that combine visual and verbal texts, so she is delighted to have illustrations accompany her poems. She teaches children's literature in the Annapolis Valley, NS. However, her MA in creative writing, buried relic of decades past, has been trying to assert itself. Her first story, "Common Signs of Spring" is in The Nashwaak Review (Vol. 28/29 – Summer/Fall 2012); it deals with the sibling suicide mentioned in DOWN.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author

of the forthcoming chapbooks The Complete Absence of Twilight

(Mad Hat Press), Echo’s Bones and Danger Falling Debris (Red

Bird Chapbooks), and An Armed Man Lurks in Ambush (unbound CONTENT). He likes Swedish and

Icelandic noir, the New York Mets, and Korean revenge movies, not

necessarily in that order.

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Wake in FrightHaving fallen asleep in one city, I somehow woke up in another. The lame hobbled about the street in a busy kind of way. An accordion I hadn’t realized I had been hearing for a while suddenly stopped playing. Instead, flames waved from the windows to get my attention. My face must have betrayed what I was thinking: I would be happy with a front window that looked out on telephone poles receding into the distance. For now, though, I must resign myself to exaggeration and paranoia. Imagine a cloud sniffing like a dog at a dusty clump of weeds. Howie Good

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Count emTwo men were fighting on Commercial Street20 people gathered to watchAll gone when police arrived

Over six cords of freshly cut woodwere stolenalong with a New Chain Saw

A total of 52 boxes ofberriesWere taken from a strawberrystandin Cambridge over a Week Long Period

Eight reports of Suspicious Sales PeopleSelling Security Systemsdoor to door

Six horses were l o o s e in Upper Dyke

Attempted theft of two flats of blueberrieson Reid Rdnorth KentvilleCulprits ran into the woods

There were 13 false911 callssix of them madeby childrenplaying with the phone

There was one case of road rage in the Kingston areaThere was one breach of the peace

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Impaired PerceptionA possible impaired drier1

turned out to be overtiredThree other similar complaintscame in

Dangerous drivingwas reported on Highway 101when a driver was driving slowly dueto a mec ha n i cal pr obl e m

When police stopped a suspectedImpaired Driver it was found he had an innerearproblem and had not been drinking

1dri[v]er

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Kat Adams[cat atoms]

KAT ADAMS is an Artist/Designer/Wearer-of-Many-Hats hailing from the Niagara region, she is an HBA graduate who specialized in Art and Art History at the University of Toronto and Sheridan College.

Adams is best known for her design work - having worked with clients such as Music Niagara, TAG Gallery, Robert Rye and family, and many more. Adams has also been known to make an occasional painting, drawing, installation, and she’s rather fond of printmaking.

She is a self-proclaimed lover of typography and assorted kitsch. She spends her free time watching British television, reading funny travel books, crafting, thrifting, collecting and creating.

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Andrea Zadro

ANDREA ZADRO a graphic designer and illustrator based in Toronto, ON. She graduated from the University of Toronto and from Sheridan College for arts & design.

She’s also a film lover, pianist, record collector, and strict David Bowie aficionado. She likes to spend her spare time blogging design inspirations or watching new films.

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Adam Snowballsee page 9 for bio

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Dave Smith

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To all of our contibutors and submitters...

We couldn’t have done this without your

willingness to share your work with a stranger who

one day decided to try and start a magazine.

He and the magazine are still trying to find

their legs but nothing would be possible

without you!

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If you have any comments, ideas or other things you’d like to share with us, let us know at thehiltmagazine@gmail.com View our submission guidlines at thehiltmagazine.com -our ‘doors’ are always open!

Stay tuned for our next issue:

What is that last thing you learned about people?

For example, I’ve learned it’s okay to talk to strangers if you’re asking about their height.

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