Somebody Get a Wig

 
To work in comedy is many things:
exciting
hilarious
exhilarating
difficult
good wigs
late nights
loud bars
free beers
never stable
full of gossip

endless hours writing sketches
only to have them forgotten
minutes spent on a throwaway joke
that lands much better

Juggling Unicyclist by Teresa Bergen

being gutted to hear
I didn’t get it
again
and again
and again

casting calls
my self esteem’s worst nightmare
plain,
not too pretty,
bigger,
wouldn’t turn a head
someone reads these
and thinks of me

Sometimes
feeling like a fraud
what’s even funny
how do I write

When it works
incredible
adrenaline rush
laughter from the audience
“That was amazing!”
“Thanks for coming”
calm on the outside
bursting with excitement inside

I’m meant to do this
I know it

moments later
feeling awkward
out of place
debit card is declined
drunk woman in the bathroom
she likes my lipstick
she shit talks my show to her friend

take the bus home
replay the show in my head
fall asleep
wake up the next day
start the cycle all over again

part of something
a community
a troupe
understood
frustrated beyond belief

tender moments
warm embraces
tears
surprising friendships
kindness
laughter
support
and howling at the moon
 

Listen to Samantha Adams read “Somebody Get a Wig.”

If you die in Canada do you die in real life? —Yahoo inquirer

If you die in Canada, the bears beat their breasts
until the berries in their fists bleed and the Mounties
ride backwards. If you die in Canada, you fall through the ice
and land in Michigan.

At 7:30 in Newfoundland, the wood for your casket
will be harvested, sustainably, by David Suzuki
and the Beachcombers. Die in Canada and the Canada geese
fly in a lowercase v.

If you die in Canada, you’ve lived in Canada: the tilled,
the untold. And if you die tonight, without me near, dear brother—
all of Canada will be sorry.

Maple Leaf by Lisa-Maj Roos

Is having a dog a sign of communistic behaviour? —Yahoo inquirer

The animal is a sign of a need, surely—
one that we’re too frightened
to say out loud.

Not a need to hold each other,
necessarily. Not the need of weak-willed men
to tell someone when to sit or fetch.

Perhaps it is a need to know
the scraps falling from our table
are not wasted,

or know the hairs
on our carpets are not our own.

Vladimir Lenin had a cat that he posed with
but never named.

Listen to Angeline Schellenberg read “If you die in Canada….”

Listen to Angeline Schellenberg read “Is having a dog….”

The Mess

My house is always a mess.
How can one person
have so many words strewn about?
I wake up, a whole story is jumbled
next to my pillow,
the’s and it’s
sticking to the sheets.

I once got to brush my teeth
squeezing toothpaste with
pulpous and semisolid mushed in.
I washed my hair with
moistened, slippery and mango-scented.

League Spartan Crackers by Skylar Cheung

I’m tired.
Tired of the words
crunching underfoot, cheerios
smushed into the carpet, never
devolving to earth.
Of climbing over
boxes of disconnected words
belonging once to poems, essays,
fiction and non,
rumbled-jumbled
tipsy-toppled
in the kitchen, in my chest
of drawers, everywhere.

An old friend came over today,
Ann’s words are
stacked neatly in one corner
of her work or
in a cupboard or
tied up with string and cord
to hold them
to preserve them
for future use.

She stepped through
vestibule, narthex and portal,
sloshed through the word waves
to the couch
which included antechamber.
“Hoarding words, gold coins in your eyes,
useless unless you use them,”
Ann admonished me
as she stirred her tea
with spork.

I confessed my secret
These are the words left
from vain attempts,
from unpublished stories,
from plays with no actors,
from essays with no voice
to fight for them.
How can I treat them as garbage
even if others did?

“You use to write poems
you use to write verse
you use to write rhyme
sonnets and ballads,
why not this time?”
(Ann is not a poet and she
knows it).

We swept the kitchen for
rune and song
odes and lyrics.
The basement. Oh.
The piles of sagging tropes and titles
even found a farce long dead
I wrote in 1999.
We laughed so hard reading
our guffaws re-attaching
the narratives.

Merriment glues
and chortles bring back
what stories once were.
After hours of hard work
dirty graphite hands,
we had at least one poem
ready for removal.

And so,
here in your hands then
is my attempt
to clean out my house.

Listen to Tereasa Maille read “The Mess.”

Gelotology

 
Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.
—Pablo Neruda, “Your Laughter”

My mother always covers her mouth when she laughs. Once I showed her
what I thought was a great photo, and she said, “Oh, my teeth.”

Scientists document our rhythmic breaths and vocalizations.
It isn’t always a joke: ask Tanganyika villagers about the epidemic of ’62.

My father’s gleeful, booming laugh—I haven’t heard that sound in years.
My pre-teen daughter, her self-conscious age—I wonder if she remembers.

Did you know researchers have tickled rats? Did you know rats titter,
at frequencies too high for humans to hear? Thank goodness for science.

My husband’s laughter, so rare: “I made Daddy laugh! That never happens!”
A baby’s easy, instinctive smile, when seeing another human face.

An exuberance of preschoolers, a giggle of girls; a hoot of old ladies, a guffaw
of old men. Shall we define ourselves by the ways in which we laugh?
 

Carrying On by Letitia Fraser (oil on quilt)

Melt

dangling icicles glitter in the sun
droplets swell, cling, quiver and finally free fall
splattering, disappearing into wet pavement

letting go – I take myself less seriously now
cracking up always feels better
origin of humor being fluids of the body

flexible and adaptable in the liquid state
fitting into any container of experience
life throws my way unexpectedly

rigid and stubborn in the solid state
easily bent out of shape when push comes to shove
the very source of such suffering

grace always here in the vapor state – hidden
presence can be felt like the stars in the sky
looking so solid these hot balls of gas

shining, shimmering           heavenly bodies
pointing to the children we once were and the elders
we are becoming, encouraging us

to see how we are one and the same
whether frozen like a rock or going with the flow
the more solid the set up the greater the joke

as we play the game of being human
not a guarded giggle but an uncontrollable roar
cracking the edges of our personalities

Colour My World by Sara Harley

 
Listen to Fazila Nurani read “Melt.”