rhubarb magazine

Rhubarb
Winter 2008, Issue Number 20
In the moment
letters 2
editorial by David Elias 3
t w o p o e m s by Christopher Barnes 4
fiction by Shannah-Lee Vidal 5
t w o p o e m s by Jean Janzen 8
fiction by Hedy Heppenstall 9
t h r e e p o e m s by Brenda Sciberras 10, 11
p o e m by Jarrett Storey 12
fiction by Valerie Stelck 13
fiction by Rudy Wiebe 15
fiction by John Goossen 20, 21
p o e m by J.L. Bond 22
fiction by Marcia Lee Laycock 23
t h r e e p o e m s by Jeff Gundy 25, 26, 27
p o e m by K. Manning Enns 28
fiction by Dora Dueck 29
t w o p o e m s by M. Travis Lane 35
p o e m by Susan Plett 36
fiction by Paul Krahn 37
p o e m by Bill Fast 39
r e c i p e 40
reviews 41
l a s t w o r d by Armin Wiebe 48
p h o t o g r a p h s by Federico Buchbinder
c o v e r painting, Hockey night, by Ray Dirks
c a n a d a p o s t m a i l sales p r o d u c t agreement n o. 40032695
r e t u r n undeliverable c a n a d i a n addresses to: rh u b a r b ma g a z i n e, 606-100 ar t h u r street, wi n n i p e g, mb r3b 1h3
p r i n t e d in c a n a d a
Winter 2008 1

Rhubarb
Editor Emeritus
Victor Enns
Editors
David Elias (this issue),
Lois Braun, Sarah Klassen,
Paul Krahn
Publisher
The Mennonite Literary Society
Charitable Registration
#111924 4986 RR0001
Advisory Board
Garry Enns, Aganetha Dyck, Hildi
Froese Tiessen, Julia Kasdorf,
Rudy Wiebe
Board of Directors
Lois Braun, David Elias, Garry Enns
(President), John Goossen, Paul
Krahn, Ken Reddig, Armin Wiebe
The views expressed by writers in
the magazine are not necessarily
those of the publisher. Copyright
remains with the writers and artists.
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***
Thanks to our supporters, in particular
the Manitoba Arts Council, and
organizations and individual donors
who have provided support for this
issue.
si m p l y v e r y g o o d
The packet with the five copies
of Rhubarb arrived several days ago,
and I read it almost through without
stopping. I had known about it, but
had not seen it before. The physical,
as well as the literary, quality are
simply very good. Congratulations.
You are obviously putting a lot of
time, resources and energy into the
magazine.
The issue you sent was especially
meaningful to me since much of
the contents deals with the envi-
Letters
Rhubarb is an independent magazine designed to provide an outlet
for the (loosely defined) Mennonite voice, reflect the changing face
of the Mennonite community, promote dialogue, and encourage
the Anabaptist tradition of reformation and protest.
Rhubarb is looking for contemporary art and writing of excellence.
Writing should be clear, stimulating and persuasive without being
didactic. Rhubarb publishes poetry, drama, creative non-fiction and
short fiction (generally, 2,000 - 2,500 words or less), and black
and white artwork and high-contrast photographs that reproduce
well. Rhubarb also publishes humour, book reviews, commentary
and articles related to theme.
Send submissions electronically or by surface mail to:
Rhubarb Magazine
606 - 100 Arthur St.
Winnipeg, MB R3B 1H3
submit@rhubarbmag.com
ronment. Since I am not a literary
writer I see now why you asked me
for a contribution. The articles are
very thoughtful and persuasive. I
will not lift any out for special mention.
They were all substantive.
Best wishes to the staff as you
keep producing a substantive publication.
Sincerely,
Cal Redekop
Harrisonburg, Virginia

I’ve always, frankly, been a little uncomfortable
with the term, Mennonite writer.
Having said that, I realize that growing
up in the heart of the West Reserve, surrounded
by villages founded by my predecessors
in the 1800s, really doesn’t leave
me much choice in the matter. Indeed, my
first language was not English but Plaut
Dietsch, which I still try to speak from
time to time. One of the things I’ve always
strived for, though, is to be included in a
larger milieu of creative artists. I wanted
to bring that sense of inclusiveness to this
issue of Rhubarb, and so I have chosen
work by new writers as well as seasoned
authors, local contributors as well as
those from different parts of the country,
indeed even from beyond our borders. I
was also interested in work created out
of a variety of cultures and backgrounds.
What I’m trying to say is that I didn’t
worry too much about the Mennonite
part. Expect a goodly number of writers
who are not from that background
(although if you read their contributor’s
notes you’ll see that some of them are
most creative in discovering a connection
of some kind!). This is an eclectic mix of
nationalities and cultures, of voices both
familiar and new.
Someone said that any given moment
contains within it every other moment—
or maybe I just made that up!—but
because the theme for this issue was “In
The Moment” I worked my way through
the submissions looking for variations
on the idea of the universal as singular,
the particular as general. There was also
the fact that I’ve always had a weakness
for the tender and tough moments of the
human condition. That, and I’ve always
believed that the familiar and easily accessible
need to be balanced by the more
complex in structure, the more difficult to
nail down. I hope these ideas are reflected
in the work I’ve chosen.
Sometimes it was a moment of im-
Any given moment
By David Elias
agery that struck me. Like the kitchen
table in Valerie Stelk’s “Neglect,” or the
lakeshore in Brenda Sciberras’ “Watching
My Muse Pass By.” Other times it might
have been a moment of language. “The
long tongue’s languid flick and flash” in
Jarret Story’s “come on medea,” or the
rain soaked poet’s “soggy pants and glum
shorts” in Jeff Gundy’s “Damp Ode.” And
sometimes the moment was less tangible,
like the feeling of disorientation in Christopher
Barnes’ “System Controls” or the
undercurrent of uncertainty in Heddy
Heppenstall’s “Him And Me And The
Moon.” In addition, there was the opportunity
to present new work by Rudy
Wiebe that takes the notion of “in the
moment” to another level. “…That You
May Awaken” not only serves the theme
of this issue, but the literary context from
which it emerges presents us with another
way to think about the notion of “now.”
In the end, what I most hope for is that
somewhere, within these offerings, the
reader may discover a moment, small and
mighty, that speaks to the possibility in all
of us for something I’ve come to refer to
as “inner bigness.” R

System Controls
By Christopher Barnes
It’s the Power-Bee phone-in
Radar dishing
Disinformation until z hour
Three past it flings
A pulsed signal,
Monkey trick codes
(A bullet-headed org. in Columbia).
A derv and steel utterance
At last says ‘Manana’.
I spend a shift de-coding
In anticipation
Of dodging beachcombing cameras.
Morning—a cannonball plunge
Into public baths.
As with all resistance,
Water clears.
4 Rhubarb
Switched On
By Christopher Barnes
Dionne Warwick is the spark
Suspended on the frequency of the transistor. We grow
Make-it-easy-on-yourself ears, drip New Jersey soul
From sandaled feet, forecasting the 45
Which will make this tingle eternal,
A diamond on black disc.
Crimplene hipsters, billow-sleeved shirt,
Cravatted v-neck. Primrose buds and my yellowish hair,
The rockery is sage-damp, sunbeamed.
Cousin Brenda is romping me out
And this infers Rose Cottage, Day-Glo sweets,
Funny-faces on a stick,
Time away from the flour of pinny strings.
We inspire daisy chains by polluted water.
The park is defectively wide-open, and as she shrugs
To hully-gully the remodelling of singer
To Miss Bessie Banks,
The orlon skirt is impudently short,
Bare puffy legs goosebumped.

Belinda rearranged the porcelain figurines
so that the princess was next to the
cowboy, but somehow the scene didn’t
look right to her. The princess was supposed
to be matched up with the knight,
but a misadventure had interfered with the
pairing. Belinda had dropped the knight
on the floor earlier that morning. He now
rested in the kitchen drawer, hidden behind
the cutlery, next to the arm that had
broken off in the fall. She couldn’t bring
herself to trash the figurine. It would have
to stay in the drawer until she could get
the right glue to repair it. The princess
figurine seemed lonely now. The pair had
been bought as a set. This was Belinda’s
collection. She had taken them out of the
small china cabinet and placed them on
the windowsill above the kitchen sink.
Because today was different, she thought.
Everything must be perfect.
The woman looked out the window
onto the backyard. It was August, and
leaves were yellow and orange. Soon the
trees would be crippled by the cold, until
they could start anew. There was a crabapple
tree that belonged to the house across
the back lane. Clumps of fruit always
spilled out into the lane and got squished
by passing cars. How lovely it would be to
make jelly from those crabapples, Belinda
thought sometimes when she was washing
dishes.
She had spent her whole life living
across the lane from that red and white
house with the crabapple tree. Mr. and
Mrs. McLeod moved in when she was in
third grade. They had a son named Joseph
who ended up in the same homeroom as
Belinda. They walked to school almost
every day that first year. The next year
Joseph decided that he didn’t want to take
a chance with the yucky girl cooties, and
ran from her while clumps of surrounding
children laughed. To Belinda, Joseph had
turned out to be loud, and even mean, at
Belinda Waits
By Shannah-Lee Vidal
times. Once when he had a friend over,
the boys took turns pelting her with the
bitter crabapples, particularly the rotten
ones. She walked quickly away, eyes
forward, never acknowledging the attack.
That was how she was, one of the quiet
ones, eating her peanut butter sandwich
and chocolate pudding cup in silence, not
daring to look at the other children. She
didn’t want to attract their attention. It was
better to fade into the background. From
then on, she pretended that there wasn’t a
boy named Joseph who went to the same
school as her. But she still thought of him.
Someday, she imagined, he would walk up
to her, after admiring her and her womanly
body (which was on order from Sears in
the form of a black padded bra that she
wondered if she would ever have the nerve
to dash around in). He would smile and say
hi. And she would say “I’m sorry, Joseph
who?” But it didn’t end up happening like
that, after all.
W h e n J o s e p h
went away to college,
Belinda stayed
at home with her
aging mother who
was on permanent
disability after a car
accident. The woman wasn’t near death,
but she couldn’t move around very well.
Depression set in, and she gradually took
to her bedroom. The room was a sanctuary
filled with the smell of antiseptic rub
and stale air. The television was on most of
the time. As she slept, the channel stayed
on the station that gave the time and
weather. It you looked closely you could
see that the test had burned its impression
permanently on the screen: June 9th 8:53,
high of 23.
That was Belinda’s main job: her
mother. Her other job was working from
the house as a seamstress. She did alterations
on dresses and pants. Occasionally
she h a d t a k e n t h e m o u t o f t h e
s m a l l c h i n a c a b i n e t a n d p l a c e d
t h e m o n t h e windowsill a b o v e
t h e k i t c h e n s i n k.
Winter 2008 5

e l i n d a w a t c h e d t h e m e a t d i n n e r
t h r o u g h t h e w i n d o w w h i l e s h e
p r e p a r e d c o n c o c t i o n s o f m e a l s
a n d medications t h a t s h e w o u l d
t a k e u p s t a i r s to h e r m o t h e r.
6 Rhubarb
she even sewed bridesmaid dresses. Particularly
during the spring, the house was
strewn with piles of satin and taffeta, and
chipper young women who weren’t the
least bit shy about having their measurements
taken.
Joseph’s mother came by a handful of
times to have some of her nicer outfits
fixed. She had lost weight, leaving the fabric
to hang a bit more than was flattering.
The younger woman never charged full
price, keeping her
lips sealed about
that part. Belinda
enjoyed the chatting.
Here and there
Mrs. McLeod would
spit out tiny crumbs
about how her son
was doing in his
various endeavors.
It was business school, and then work. Finally,
one day Mrs. McLeod gushed about
Joseph’s wedding to some lawyer. Belinda
just smiled when Mrs. McLeod rambled on
about the couple, pretending Belinda had a
membership in this inner circle. When the
grandchildren finally came along, Belinda
found herself intrigued to see the photos
Mrs. McLeod carried around in her purse.
Belinda liked the visits; she felt like she
had a connection with the picture-perfect
family in the photographs. Sometimes
while Belinda was tending to her garden
she would see the grandchildren running
around in Mrs. McLeod’s backyard. She
considered those days lucky.
Mrs. McLeod stopped seeing Belinda
for alterations after her Mr. McLeod died
from a heart attack. The old woman followed
her husband into the earth only
months later. At her funeral, Belinda
signed the guestbook and followed her
way through the line so she could offer
condolences to the family. There were the
two children and the pale-skinned wife of
Joseph, and a few people she didn’t know.
She greeted Joseph last. She told him
she was sorry. He clasped her hand and
squeezed it tightly. He didn’t say anything,
only nodding slightly as he looked on
her face. Self-conscious, she brought her
fingertips to the patches of dry skin that
had developed on her cheeks last winter
and still lingered no matter how much
lotion she used.
The seamstress didn’t stay for the food.
She didn’t care for being in a room of
people she didn’t know. As she was leaving,
a tap on her on the shoulder startled
her. When she turned around she noticed
how Joseph’s body had swollen with the
years. He told her that he was moving to
his parent’s house. It’s bigger house, and
he said they needed the space. Then he
surprised her by putting his arms around
her and hugging her tightly. She felt her
cheeks heat up.
In the months that followed, she
watched Joseph’s family take over the
old house. Curtains changed, so did the
furniture in the kitchen. Belinda watched
them eat dinner through the window while
she prepared concoctions of meals and
medications that she would take upstairs
to her mother. As the days went on, Belinda
studied the red and white house with that
crabapple tree, and the family who lived
there. More than once she witnessed the
two kids shaking that tree and grabbing
fistsfull of the tart fruit. She figured the boy
was about eleven. The girl was probably
eight. Belinda thought the girl looked like
the little princess figurine, with her wavy
blonde hair and pale skin. Belinda always
thought that maybe she would give it to
her someday. But as the days went on, she
didn’t see the kids anymore. She didn’t
even see the family eating dinner. All was
quiet. She knew they were home because
lights would periodically come on and go
off again hours later.
It was when she was uprooting some
carrots that she found out Joseph’s wife
had left him. He called over to her and
made small talk about the harvest, saying
nothing ever grew for him. Belinda
felt him stare, and she looked at him, and
found that his eyes met hers. Joseph told
her he was leaving tomorrow until next
Thursday. It was a business meeting in
Toronto. He asked her to keep an eye on
the house for him. “Of course,” she said.
“You don’t have to worry about anything.”
She gently rubbed the sleeve of this sweatshirt.
“One more thing. Do you want to get

together sometime? Maybe we could have
dinner when I get back?” She smiled and
said yes, holding her breath as his lips
grazed her cheek to deliver a tiny peck.
“I think you’ll have to show me your
gardening secret,” he told her as he walked
away.
Belinda pushed a few loose wisps of hair
behind her ears. It was light brown, with
a scattering of silver. Today was Thursday,
and she had carefully tied it back in a neat
chignon, just like the woman on the soap
opera she used to watch with her mother.
She practiced walking gracefully across
the room just like she saw that actress do
with confidence as she captivated the male
lead before even saying a word. She had
to be ready.
After she took off her peach cotton
apron and slung it languidly on the back
of one of the dining room chairs, Belinda
took a look at herself in front of the fulllength
mirror that decorated the entrance
to the hall closet. She smoothed out the
forest green polyester dress she had on.
It was made from a Butterick pattern
she’d found years ago at a second hand
shop. Holding her breath, Belinda turned
around and looked backward in the mirror
to inspect the back view. After all this time,
the zipper still bore her weight, and Belinda
was thankful. It was the prettiest dress
she owned. As she stood in front of the
mirror, the woman thought of something.
She opened the mirrored closet door and
poked around until she found what she
was looking for between a box of Christmas
tree ornaments and a pile of scarves.
With the tip of her fingers she lured the
box into her palm. After she slipped on
the three-inch high black pumps, Belinda
did a little twirl in front of the full-length
mirror. Perfect, she thought. In her head,
she snapped a freeze frame of the image
of herself, airbrushing the scuff marks on
her shoes along with the obvious flaws in
her pear-shaped body.
Everything was now coming together for
dinner. Belinda set the table and checked
on the roast that was simmering in the
oven. It was something she remembered
her mother serving on Sundays. While the
roast was fine, Belinda frowned at the table
setting. She used her nice dishes with the
small blue flowers, but the table still looked
too ordinary. It should have a centerpiece.
There were still some pink lilies blooming
in the backyard. Those would look great on
the table, she thought. Feeling impulsive,
Belinda grabbed a steak knife and went
outside.
There, bent over the lilies, Belinda heard
the car pull up. She kept her head down but
stole a look as the cab pulled away. Joseph
was standing there in the back lane. He had
on a dark blue suit. She couldn’t tell, but
she guessed his shoes were immaculate.
Along with his big black suitcase, he had
a bouquet of yellow flowers. Belinda felt
dabs of perspiration under her arms, praying
she would be safe from the horrific embarrassment
of sweat stains. While she was
standing in front of her garden wearing her
best dress and highest heels she caught his
eye. Joseph gave her a gleaming smile. He
was the kind of man who took good care
of his teeth. Belinda felt her head for stray
hairs and discreetly brushed them back.
Her chignon was starting to unravel. Carrying
her lilies, she walked over to Joseph.
“Welcome back,” she told him.
“Thanks.” He was still smiling.
“How was the trip?”
“About as lively as you’d expect from a
bunch of stuffed shirts.”
“What about you, have I missed anything
in the neighbourhood?” He winked.
“Any new gossip I should be aware of?”
She opened her mouth, but he cut her
off. “Now, you look rather lovely today. Is
Winter 2008 7

sh e t h e n b e g a n to g e t h e r
k i t c h e n b a c k in o r d e r a f t e r
t h e c u l i n a r y c h a o s.
8 Rhubarb
it a special occasion? Or maybe you got
all dressed up for me?” She laughed nervously.
They both heard the car coming
and moved to opposite sides of the lane
to give it space to pass.
“You brought flowers.”
“That’s right.” He gave
her a wide smile, revealing
the crinkles of time etched
around his eyes. “My wife
and I have decided to try
and put things back together.”
“Those flowers are for her?”
“Yep. Makes her happy. Daisies.”
“I see.”
“I’m just ecstatic,” he confessed. “I feel
positively giddy.”
“Good for you.” She turned away and
walked toward her own house, but he said
one last thing.
“You know, I prefer lilies, myself,” he
“Jesu, Priceless Treasure”
in Tango
By Jean Janzen
—after Richard Stoltzman and Jeremy Wall
Seventy years I have known this chorale,
the rich four-part harmony like a ship
plowing, full-throttle through heavy swell
as the melody’s intervals lift and dip,
opening a chasm of longing. The poem seeks
to fill the space—“source of purest pleasure”—
now to the rhythm of tango: cheek against cheek,
forsaking all others, we lean into the beat,
clarinet wailing the vow over piano and guitar,
hands clasped, arms extended, our feet
in tandem. The ship strives toward a far
land I’ve never seen, Bach and I, in sweet
rehearsal on the deck of the universe, for
the time we arrive, breathless, at the double-bar.
said. And with that he gave her a respectful
nod and opened the wooden gate that
led to the red and white house with the
crabapple tree.
That night Belinda didn’t eat the roast.
She put it in the fridge and made herself
a cheese sandwich and opened a bottle
of wine. The lilies she put on the table
in tall glass. She then began to get her
kitchen back in order after the culinary
chaos. While Belinda was scrubbing the
roasting pan, she drew the curtains to the
window over the sink, no longer craving
the scenery provided by the house across
the lane. A little later, as she was putting
away the steak knife she had used to cut
the flowers, Belinda came upon the broken
knight figurine in the drawer and threw it
in the garbage. R
What we are given
By Jean Janzen
In the photo I am crouched and listening
to three chickens—Rhode Island Reds
explaining the mysteries. They had almost
given up, they say, on anyone hearing,
what with the scream of fighter jets
overhead, and the hawks circling.
Here at the western edge of the continent
the ocean’s glare reminds us, it’s either
fly, swim, or build a mound like
my tribal ancestors. Here, last chance
to learn the secrets of the egg, the hens say:
beauty, fertility, and nourishment,
what we are given to give away.
They cluck and shift their plump
weight from claw to claw until I feed
them, sisters at the edge, softly crowing.

Me and Him and the Moon
It’s 3 am, and I’m awake and feeding
my baby boy when everyone else in the
flippin’ block is asleep. I sit up in our
favorite chair. The orange flowers on the
armrests are rubbed thin and the springs
are gone, but we sink into it perfectly,
me and Dwayne. We sit here, me half
asleep, him filling his belly with my milk,
and then it hits me, that bonding mother
load, a surge, like a head rush but instead
I feel it coming into my arms, my
chest. I take Dwayne and bring his big
loopy head to my nose, breathe in real
deep, like I used to when I’d be inhaling
the sweet stuff. I suck in the milky smell
of him. My lips, a heavy-duty magnet to
his head, my bones pushing deep into
his little bones. The harder I kiss, the
better it feels.
It feels like I’m addicted to holding
Dwayne—but not quite, because addiction
makes you do bad things, like
my last high, over a year ago now, at the
Western with Jimmy. We were still together
then. I blacked out for an hour or
so, and woke up, my back to the garbage
bin in the lane, fully clothed, except for
my underwear. No sight of Jimmy anywhere.
I have no idea how I got home
and can only guess what happened
behind that bin. I finally got a hold of
Jimmy the next day. He said he left on
his own around midnight because he
wanted to get some sleep before his
morning shift. That freaked me out and
I haven’t touched the stuff since then.
Instead of bad things like that, I feel like
this kind of addiction—me craving my
baby boy—his touch, his smell, pushes
me to the ends of the earth to do good
things.
So I hold him and feed him, feed him
and hold him, until he’s soft and heavy
with sleep. I look up and see the moon,
a big fat moon, and it feels like me and
him and the moon are the only things
that matter.
By Hedy Heppenstall
I put Dwayne back in his crib and
walk to the open window. I run my
hands along the worn window ledge
and stare at the moon. All of a sudden
I smell cigarette smoke—just a stream
of it coming into my open window
from some insomniac below. I wave my
nose towards the smoke.
It smells so good. When I
was pregnant I quit smoking
and it was easy to stay
away because I’d get a weird
aftertaste. But now, it smells
heavenly. I make myself
turn away from the window and back to
Dwayne. I stand over his crib and stare
at him, watch his eyelids twitch, his lips
move like he’s dreaming of the boob.
After months of him floating around
inside of me, it’s finally sinking in that
he’s here with me for the long run. I
worked hard to turn things around so I
could keep this baby. I went to prenatal
classes on my own. I took my vitamins,
except for a few weeks here and there,
when swallowing the big pink pill made
me nauseous. I’ve been going to Narcotics
Anonymous every week, though every
once in awhile I bump into someone
that I used to party with. It’s weird to be
straight together especially when the last
time we saw each other was over a crack
pipe. Seems dangerous, getting a bunch
of former users together. But the stories,
hearing all the bad things that came
from our addictions, that helps to keep
me straight. All for my precious boy.
My precious boy. I lean over the crib
rail and kiss his head, breathe in his
smell, but it hurts my back to stay there.
I stand up and walk back to the window.
I can’t see for the life of me who’s
down there having that smoke. They
must be right up against the building
and I can’t lean out to see because of the
screen. I try to hoist the screen open but
it won’t budge. Maybe it’s my cousin,
i m a k e myself t u r n a w a y
f r o m t h e w i n d o w a n d
b a c k to dw a y n e .
Winter 2008 9

10 Rhubarb
Camille, who lives on Two. She’s never
been a good sleeper, and if it’s her, I can
yell down and tell her to come up for a
cup of coffee, decaf, of course. Maybe it’s
Jimmy, working up the nerve to show
up on our doorstep and finally meet his
son. I want to shove through the screen
but I’m afraid it’ll bend or pop out and
I’ll lose my damage deposit.
I scan the room. I catch a glimmer on
the shelf above the change table. I walk
over and pick up the baby grooming kit,
find the tiny scissors next to the baby
blue brush and the rainbow-colored
Q-Tips. I reach for the scissors and open
them. These are the most beautiful scissors
I’ve ever seen, curved and dainty.
Sharp. I get another whiff of smoke, the
smell of honey. I lunge the scissor blade
across the screen.
They’re gone. Whoever was out there
is gone. The coolness of the night air
August
By Brenda Sciberras
We are zombies of the beach
sifting through sand, broken shells
& pebbles for washed up storm
glass. Misshapen fragments of cobalt
blue, emerald green, & frosty
white to add to the cottage collection.
Displayed in tin boxes & on wooden
shelves, pieces of coloured glass as
precious as the remaining heat-filled
days of August. The haze & high
humidity of the dying day, rising
as our breath becomes laboured,
hits me and I take in the picture: my
head stuffed through a window screen,
my baby, sleeping. I don’t even have
to look at him and I see his eyeballs
rolling under those lids. Then I look at
the moon. No streaked windowpane
between us now. Just me, the cool night
air, the screen curled against my neck,
and the moon. If I squint a little I can
see Dwayne, Dwayne’s face in the moon,
looking at me, that little smirk on his
face like he can’t believe what he’s seeing,
and he doesn’t know whether to let out
a nervous laugh or to turn away, embarrassed,
and pretend like nothing happened.
I pull myself back into the room,
smooth down my hair and bring the
backs of my warm hands to the coolness
of my cheeks. I’ll just sew this screen up
tomorrow and it’ll be good as new, as
if nothing happened. Because nothing
happened. R
stagnant, almost non-existent. Our minds
become lethargic, bodies numb
to a crawl. Cool lake water refreshes
our verve as waves lap the shoreline
& we immerse our slathered
bodies in the aqua of summer.

Moonlit macadam
By Brenda Sciberras
In the middle of a moon
lit night I watch shadows
reverberate across
a silvery moist lawn.
Lightening is in the sky & I hear
rain drops through the open
windowpane, as they fall
upon autumn leaves.
Trees begin to rustle
for an instant I see
what I believe to be a sasquatch,
looming in the moon
light. Lean & large, with matted
moose like hair long arms
dangle & sway as he strides
down the stone path stopping
gazing toward the darkened cottage.
My squinting eyes search
for more movement. I see his moon
lit nostrils sniffing
as he takes my scent & toys
with it, baring his teeth toward
me as if laughing. I know he’s been
waiting to get caught
creeping around a tree. He runs
down the path, glides across
the macadam with a dash & jumps
upward to treetops & out of sight.
I crawl back under the covers,
dream of hairy creatures
dancing in my head.
co m i n g u p in Rh u b a R b
Watching my
muse pass by
By Brenda Sciberras
#21 de s i g n i n g me n n o n i t e s ii—Spring 2009
#22 wa r & pe a c e —Summer 2009
Guest Editor: Victor Enns
general submissions a l s o w e l c o m e .
When submitting work by email, please include
name & contact information on attachments.
For further submission information, see pages 2 & 22.
The pelican silently soars over
head, above the lake & leafy
birch & poplar shoreline.
She is almost heavenly—mystical.
I don’t know what made me
glance upward may—
be the shadow moving
across my bleached-white
page empty of words.
I’m amazed at what I can see
with my new eyeglasses.
Her orange bill & pouch,
wings stretched out straight,
seven feet across, black-edged
jagged feathers—oily
ready for water. Can she
see me down here watching
her graceful gliding—her
majestic matinee? I am swallowed
up in thoughts of having vision.
The clarity of the universe—
of the words I can see
upon the page. The pelican’s
slow decent from my sight
keeps me wanting more.
Winter 2008 11

12 Rhubarb
come on medea
By Jarrett Storey
come on, medea
calm yrself, young sundaughter
test yr exactness
at my worn shoulder
careful not to touch much
I want you to come
undressed &plotting long
in the teeth
without firebreathers,
narcoticless & hypnotizable
I want to outlive this veinlong feeling;
I want like you want:
to give & ungive
in fell through
time swoops
sweep like rain
rust out time
’s long night
I want our mouth
muscles to remember
the taste
of metal before language
at the long tongue’s languid
flick & lash
after all, aren’t we argonauts
too? creeping with the criminal’s
urge to see
our done damage redone
but we’re careful tragedi
ans mindful enough
not to sing too strong
in a clean island murder key
lest our crowsong plays
to long our flightlessness:
never to unrest our resting
giants’ rest

They had each entered the kitchen
through opposing doorways. He descended
the twelve stairs from the second
storey of the house with duffle bag
in hand. She entered from the basement
with a basket full of anemic, threadbare
towels. Their heated redolent aura was
impalpable.
She set the wicker basket on the floor
and shuffled to the sink. Her old green
flip-flops, which she wore year round,
made a whishing sound as they connected
with the floor. The cheerless
beige kitchen surrounded her with an
indifferent aspect. A wallpaper border of
Canada geese circled the top of the room
in endless flight. She glanced through
the window above the sink. The view
was hazy, obscured by moisture, because
the seal had dried out years ago. The
distorted vision of their small backyard
irritated her and caused her to look
away. She reached over to the stove for
the stainless steel kettle. It mirrored her
wrinkled, sallow skin.
Weariness had embraced her face,
drawn out its length, and altered the skin
below her eyes into deep purple depressions.
She was dog-tired. The living
room couch, where she slept, had been
uncooperative last night. Her neck ached
and muscle spasms shot up and down
her spine. She sat down for a moment,
easing herself into one of the wobbly
kitchen chairs.
He was seated at the opposite end of
the table from her but turned slightly to
his right. Last year’s calendar was tacked
to the wall behind him. Its length shadowed
the top of his head, an errant halo.
Her eyes took in, and then dismissed, the
duffle bag on the floor by his side. He
was dressed for the day, his hair carefully
styled, face ruddy. She could tell that
he’d already had his morning shower
Neglect
By Valerie Stelck
and shave. She couldn’t remember the
name of his aftershave but there was a
trace of its musky scent in the air.
She had allowed herself to melt into
the essence of the house; a mute eidolon
moving through its walls. The house
in which she had spent twenty years of
marriage. She was more married to it
than to him. She knew that they had
both done only enough maintenance to
sustain their existence. Her eyes swept
over to the stove, the kettle whistled
impatiently. She got up and poured the
boiling water into an old brown teapot.
She peered through the window,
again. Her eyes were fixed, trance-like,
upon the gloomy spring sky, a gray
formless canvas. She dropped her eyes
to the dirty melting snow pile in the far
west corner of the yard, a silent reminder
of the difficult winter that had just
passed. That corner of the yard had been
a fertile garden ten years ago.
She remembered him entering the
yard that day, through the gate that was
adjacent to the one-car garage. His tall
slender frame embraced a large black
and white teddy bear. “For the baby!”
Winter 2008 13

th e o d o r o f neglec t
w a f t e d t h r o u g h h e r
n o s t r i l s.
14 Rhubarb
he cheerfully called out to her and with
a goofy gait walked up to the house. He
had known that she was watching him,
could see his brilliant blue eyes bursting
with the future.
She took the bear from him gently.
She brought it to bed that night and laid
it in the space between them. The next
morning she buried the bear, with its
permanent smile, face down in a corner
of the garden. Later that day,
she told him, “There’s no
baby.”
As she stood at the sink, a
frozen statue, she saw his hazy
reflection move to the fridge.
He opened it and the light inside flickered.
She turned. He reached into the
back of the fridge with his narrow arm,
slender fingers and tightened the bulb. It
still flickered. She looked into the fridge
from where she stood, saw what he saw:
open, uncovered tins of food scattered
on its shelves. A half eaten tin of mango,
from a snack she had last night, and a
tin of ravioli she tried to eat for supper
a few nights ago. The scent of sour milk
and spoiled apples reached out to her.
She couldn’t remember the last meal she
had eaten. There was no joy in eating,
her throat constricted with every mouthful.
He slammed the door in disgust.
“Why don’t you clean this fridge out?
There’s nothing in here worth keeping,”
he angrily complained.
“Why haven’t you left?” she snapped
impatiently.
“I just wanted to say good-bye. I
should have left while you were in the
basement.”
“You should have. You and your
duffle bag. You’ve been moving out for
months. Oh, at first I wasn’t supposed
to know, right? Like when you told me
you had sold your tools because you
didn’t need them. Mind you, that’s probably
true because you never used them
around here.”
“That’s a lie.” He stared at her, his face
slightly red, body rigid.
“Then you moved out all of your office
furniture. I know you’re storing that
at your brother’s house. How stupid do
you think I am?” She stood facing him,
felt like smacking him.
The odor of neglect wafted through
her nostrils. It permeated through each
and every pore of the house; the fridge
was just the tip of the iceberg. She made
a mental list that started with the leaking
faucet at the kitchen sink. Its base
was coated with a crusty, white deposit
of calcium. She stared at the curled-up
strips of linoleum flooring. His left foot
exerted enough weight on one strip
to hold it down. The main floor bathroom
toilet no longer worked. He had
complained about it but never fixed it.
She swept her arm around and up into
the air, the palm of her hand facing the
stained kitchen ceiling. “Look at this
dump! You ignored me. You ignored the
house. I’m glad we didn’t have the baby.”
She took a deep breath, shifted her
eyes, and locked them with his. “It wasn’t
a miscarriage,” turning away from him
she whispered, “and it wasn’t yours.”
Her words knocked him out of the
kitchen. “I don’t know why I married
you,” he said, in a low measured voice
as he left the room. She dropped to the
floor and crossed her legs, could see him
hesitate at the front entrance. He opened
the solid oak door and rubbed his hand
along its face. The varnish finish was
almost gone, it’s surface rough. A small
splinter of wood caught the tip of his index
finger eliciting a tiny drop of blood.
Her face held no expression. She
watched as he opened and closed his
mouth, no words escaped. He divorced
himself from the house, firmly closing
the door.
A slim beam of sunlight had poked
through the kitchen window and rested
at an angle along the top of her thighs.
She shifted her body over and laid stomach
down, sobbing, her tears washing the
tired linoleum floor. Her arms and legs
were spread out, forming imperfect vees.
She drew them in and out, in and out,
like an inverted snow angel, wishing she
could just melt into the floor. R

Author’s Note: Unlike a novel, in life no story ever ends. Occasionally I’ve been
tempted by the possible continuing lives of people I have imagined in my fiction.
Three years ago, after another journey to Russia and Ukraine, I yielded to the temptation
of The Blue Mountains of China and wrote a possible Chapter 14 called “The
Unknown.” It has never been published, and this part, “That You May Awaken,” the
first of three, is woven from strands in the original Chapters 2, 4, 5, and 13; it takes
place 33 years after the novel ends.
THE UNKNOWN—
part 1
... That You May Awaken
By Rudy Wiebe
“And in this room, that desk,” the guide declares in his mellifluous English,
“Anton Chekhov in January to October he wrote The Cherry Orchard, 1903.
Writing slowly, for him slowly, he was only forty-three here but by thirty years
he had written over five hundred stories, novellas, and three tremendous plays,
and already a doctor too, before thirty, but at this desk, The Cherry Orchard, his
masterpiece, he was spitting blood and could not go to Moscow for rehearsal. His
masterpiece, he died with TB on July 2, 1904.”
Not here in the white Dacha, Liesel thinks, he died in Badenweiler, Germany.
She watches the guide’s elegant hand gesture over the table and its untouchable
inkbottles, like the profound Orthodox blessing of an eight-part chorale sounding
through a cathedral, and she is certain he will not mention that fact as her mind
slips aside to her own small triangle of Germany a lifetime ago: Universitaetstadt
Tuebingen on the green Neckar for study and Baden Baden for Dostoevski pilgrimage
and Badenweiler for Chekhov, sulphur vapours prickling in your nostrils
like feeble ghosts sifting up from the pools, and castle crags on immense, forested
cliffs—she always imagined Chekhov’s Yalta studio must face the sun and the
open sea, but now that she is here at last she finds only a rectangle of sky and low
vine terraces covering hills.
Du gehst, dass du kommst.
Du schlaefst, dass du erwachst.
Du—
What was the third line? A natural triad,
‘You go, that you may come,
You sleep, that you may awaken,
You ....’
That could have been written by Chekhov but wasn’t, it is an Egyptian sarcophagus
text from 2000 BC , there in the museum that occupies Tuebingen Castle now,
not when she was a student half a century ago; then the Castle was headquarters
for the French Army soldiers who stared at you over sub-machine guns when
you arrived at the train station, now gnomic translations between emptied stone
sarcophagi—the third line:
Winter 2008 15

16 Rhubarb
Du atst, daut du—waut?—schitst?
You eat, that you may—
Ever a dirty old Lowgerman woman. She is alone, back in the other room with the
piano where the young man said Feodor Chaliapin once sang “Boris Godunov.”
Was he accompanied by Rachmaninov, who escaped the Bolsheviks in 1918 and
died exiled forever in the desert of California? The young man had not said who
played, though Liesel thinks she knows, oh, if she could only have heard that voice,
alive, singing words believed so utterly as only a Russian basso can.
1938. She was eighteen, come to Buenos Aires the year Chaliapin died, it was
possible he could have given a concert—the year he died?—oh sure, and she an
empty Mennonite girl but too book-smart for the miserable Paraguayan Chaco
would have had the money to buy a ticket, the brains to do it—she’d have done it
if he’d sung Mephistophiles! Russian and that word alone would have lured her.
She is laughing at herself; her ridiculous, invented memories of a childhood, as
if she wasn’t crammed full of enough actual ones. Schluffing about in this empty
room, looking at the felt schlorre they made you wear over your shoes to save
the floor. She feels her body trying to register details the way she always does on
tours, automatic life-long research, a learned paper can sound so evocative if you
have an exact image—“Anton Chekhov’s Yalta Studio: The Crack in the Floor,”
where is there a crack?
From the other room: “... Chekhov wanted his actress wife to act Charlotta
Ivanovna, the German governess, she comes on the first scene leading a small
dog and goes off again in the end leading it ....”
And suddenly Liesel feels herself overwhelmed with a feeling of ... hollow ... as
if in this high, empty room a cave were opening into the belly of her life, a hollow
of longing at all her years so often and forever with nothing—face it!—no
one to fill her with anything but relentless working texts and facts and minutiae
of endless ridiculous—dear god five quick years of Jose Cereno when she was a
child—listen, here, in this empty room packed with voices and music and laughing
and Anton Chekhov talking with Olga who certainly loved him, Maxim Gorki
bringing “The Lower Depths” and Stanislavski who would play The Cherry Orchard
lead at the Moscow Art Theatre with his vivid hands, Chekhov trying simply to
breathe, gagging, spitting out his genius—and Liesel feels the eight decades of
her single life stuffed with relentless gathering like some peasant woman hording
every kernel of corn against a famine that will never come, a banquet no one will
ever eat: what are you doing here? Hollow old woman. Go home to your Calgary
penthouse and shut down. Die.
That was the sarcophagus triad line:
Du stirbst, dass du lebst.
You die, that you may live.
Tell me, o Tuebingen Egyptian: how?
-----
Liesel is walking along the Yalta promenade towards the sun half gone behind
the western headland of the Black Sea. She walks the edge bordering the stones
and black water, her deaf right side can easily ignore the noisy restaurants, the bars,
in her long life she has eaten and drunk enough, she need never bother with that
again; though she might, tomorrow, if the young guide appeared for breakfast and
she could speak properly to him, watch his long jaw shift into his own language.

The reddish-blond hair he was always sweeping back with his quick hand would
hide the side of his face as he dipped down to his coffee cup.
But he won’t be there. He’s a day guide and gone now to wherever he lives, some
tiny cubicle in one of the enormous concrete apartment slabs built by Krushchev
forty-five years ago and crumbling everywhere you look, he will sleep on a lumpy
couch in the kitchen-eating-living space of his grandmother’s flat—who will be
ten years younger than Liesel and certainly have no natural teeth.
The endless racket of bars lining the promenade; Liesel concentrates on her
steady footfall along the quay, the white lappings of the sea she watches at the
edge of the stony beach; his voice in the other room: “She comes on the first scene
leading a small dog and goes off again in the end leading it ....”
The play—the superb short story. She stops, facing the darkening sea. She,
Elizabeth Driediger Cereno at eighty years of age, is walking on the promenade
at the Black Sea resort of all the czars and the Communist comrades that destroyed
them, walking alone, but unlike Chekhov’s heroine Anna Sergeyevna she
is neither young nor blond nor wearing a hat and she is certainly unaccompanied
by any dog—endless translators played around with that little dog, trying to be
distinctive: “The Lady with the Toy Dog,” or “The Lady with the Dog,” or “The
Lady with the Pet Dog,” “The Lady with the Lapdog”—perhaps Chekhov met his
beautiful wife here, on this quay with a white
Pomeranian trundling at her heel, that was
why he wanted her to play the small, vivid
role of governess in The Cherry Orchard. See
her enter and cross the stage with the tiny
dog, which would not again be seen until the
very end when she would lead it across in the
opposite direction and leave the sister and
brother to weep guietly in each others’ arms,
and then the stage would be empty. Silent,
except for the sounds of axes chopping at the
beautiful trees in the orchard.
And their ancient servant Feers coming
on, alone in the deserted house:
They’ve gone. They’ve forgotten me.
An old man. After the elegant lady and her dog are gone, the sister and brother
weeping, an old, old man dares to say to himself:
Your life’s slipped past ... you haven’t got any strength left, nothing’s
left, nothing ... Oh you ... you old nyedotyopa.
Liesel thinks, I should lie down here, turn the noise of the quay into a distant
knocking, lie down as if this promenade were a lumpy couch left behind. A
superb word, nyedotyopa, a word Chekhov invented because there wasn’t one
good enough in all Russian. You old good-for-nothing dim-wit, you Lowgerman
Schlosaewendoot, literally ‘beat seven dead’, where did that—
“Madame Cereno,” said a voice behind her. “Good evening.”
She knew him; after a moment she turned slowly and quoted in Russian:
“‘A new person, it was said, had appeared on the promanade: a lady with a
pet dog.’”
His long jaw sagged in astonishment, but he responded without hesitation,
“‘Gurov thought, if she is here alone without her husband or a friend, it wouldn’t
be a bad idea to make her acquaintance.’”
Winter 2008 17

18 Rhubarb
They laughed together. Liesel said, “One of the greatest stories ever written.”
He bowed to her; they walked; she could feel him shorten his stride to fit hers.
She thought, there is a strange light coming over the sea, and beside her he said
Chekhov’s next words aloud:
“‘The water is warm, deepening lilac, and soon the moonlight will lie on it
like a golden path.’”
“A hundred years ago this promenade was certainly quieter.”
“There were crowds when the steamer arrived. They took a carriage to Oreander.”
Liesel said, in her most cynical tone, “Do you also remember, the lace on her
lingerie reminded Gurov of fish scales?”
But he continued, unrufflable, “Oreander is there still, even
the church building, high above the sea.”
“And also the bench where they sat?”
“No,” the young man said. “Long ago the wood was used
for firewood. You speak Russian so perfectly.”
“Perfected at my father’s knee, in Paraguay.”
“Paraguay!” Surprise: an emotion at last.
“I went to school three years in Russia, I was born north
of here in a village on the Molotchnaya River.” She hesitated;
he was too polite to look at her but she could feel his tension
now, so she added, “I was born in 1920.”
“Ahhhh,” he said softly. “Your family fled the Revolution.”
“Fled Stalin, in 1929. But Canada would not accept us, so
we landed in Paraguay.”
“Canada.” After a moment he said, “My grandfather was
born in 1930 and he says that they never .... “He stopped, as if
the growing eagerness of his voice betrayed him; he continued
in his usual tone, “My grandfather never saw his father, and
his mother died very young, she was a worker on a collective
farm. So ... how many languages did your father teach you, so perfectly?”
“Russian, High German, Lowgerman, the others I learned on my own.”
“What is that, ‘Lowgerman?”
“The Mennonites spoke that, here in Russia. A good home language.”
“Mennonites?” he said, turning the word on his tongue. “My grandfather says
there were Mennonites near where he was born.”
“Yes, many they lived in the Ukraine, before they fled,” Liesel said. “Did he say
any names?”
“He once said his mother worked for Mennonites, a little while ... before Stalin’s
Big Change.”
“The Five Year Plan in 1928? When he collectivized the land?”
“Perhaps ...” he said apologetically. “I’m too young, we learn very little in school
now of Soviets, nothing at all about Stalin.”
“I have often thought,” Liesel said, “all history teaching should be stopped,
completely, for good. Oppression, war, horror—all history teaches children is
whom to hate, how to hunger for revenge.”
“Or ... perhaps ... how to hate revenge?”
“You are very clever.” Liesel stopped and looked at him until he turned his
head to face her. The last light from the sun glancing up from the obsidian sea lit
his long face framed by red-gold hair. “You are excellent with languages. Why do
you stay here, spend your good talk on passing tourists?”
“My grandfather lives up there,” he gestured to the lights on the darkening
hills of the city.
“In America, if they saw your face and beautiful hair, they’d straighten your

teeth and a hundred cameras would be in your face, you’d be an instant model, a
star to be stared at by thin girls in advertisements, or draped on their arms, you’d
make thousands of dollars a ....”
She stopped herself; eighty years old and still like this ... yet there was something
so strangely true in the beauty of his face, and his voice—she could not
understand her own silliness, true ... true?
“I live with my grandfather,” he said, as if he had not heard her.
“He is very fortunate.”
Slowly they began to walk again. Soon the promenade lights would come on,
but for the moment they were moving into the comfort of darkness.
“Where did you learn your English?”
“A technical school, in Terwoj Rog. Not a very good school, but two years we
had a Canadian volunteer, she taught us.”
“Trewoj Rog?”
“A city four hundred kilometers north from here. But my grandfather was
here, alone ...”
She felt him glance at her quickly, but it was too dark to read his expression.
“You are probably wondering,” he said, “how my grandfather could get a pension
apartment in beautiful Yalta. What he did for the Party.”
“I wasn’t really thinking of that.”
He insisted, “Of course he was a member of the Party, all his life, and he always
worked for it, but he has never told me what, not exactly what he ....”
Liesel said gently, “I was thinking that once before 1930 there was a Mennonite
colony near Trewoj Rog, with many villages, it was called Karatov.”
“Yes, yes, that’s a name my grandfather said. He was born there.”
“Born in Karatov!”
“Maybe not born,” he was apologetic again. “But that’s a name he says. Would
you like to meet him?”
“Could I?”
“We’re walking in the right direction—but the street is very steep.”
“Perhaps we could hire a carriage?”
He glanced at her, and then they both laughed, thinking of the Chekhov story
over a century ago and the car drivers that now swarmed everywhere in Yalta,
offering ancient Volgas, offering Mercedes.
She said, “We could find a taxi. But it is very late.”
“My grandfather is blind and cannot walk, but he hears everything. I don’t
know if he ever sleeps. He is always awake when I am—to hear you speak would
make him very happy.”
“Perhaps, he knows Lowgerman?”
“He ... he has never said a word to me.”
Liesel was trying to imagine herself blind, unable to move, always awake. And
with a grandson with such a voice to bring the world into your tiny space of
apartment. Sitting or lying forever, awake with memories.
And she remembered Gurov, his thought when he left his small daughter at
school and walked on to his rendevous with Anna Sergeyena:
The only interesting life of every individual goes on as under the cover
of night, secretly. Every individual existence revolves around a mystery.
The cover of night. A mystery.
The sun was gone now, and there was as yet no moon over the black sheen of
the water, the dense cliff of land ahead rising out of it.
The young man beside her asked in English, “Should I find a taxi?”
“Yes,” she said. “Tell me, what is your name?” R
Winter 2008 19

20 Rhubarb
A Quick Stop
By John Goossen
A warm June evening, two weeks to grad. I end up in Harry’s car
after Youth. Ten minutes later he parks his Rambler behind the white
stucco house. A quick stop, then we’ll meet the guys at Denny’s. The
basement door is open. Someone hands me an Extra Old Stock. My
brand. This is Harry’s high school crowd. We’re in different zones. The
rec room, in black light, is hot and hazy and full with In-A-Gadda-Da-
Vida. I grab some pretzels and disappear into a corner armchair. The
beer done, I lean my head back; eyes closed I focus on the drum solo.
The chair bumps and someone tugs on my hair. A girl on either side
of me. Introductions. Kim, parents own the house, and Janet, fuzzy
tight sweater and red and black tartan pants. I-I-I’m Jake, Harry’s
friend. Damn. Kim disappears. Janet wants to dance. I don’t really
dance. It’s the Mennonite in me. The music turns Creedence. Fine, I
don’t know anyone anyway. Four songs later, I break for a beer. Another
song begins.
Janet grabs my hand and we’re outside. The lawn is dry and slopes
toward the alley. I sit and she leans against me. I hear Oye Como Va.
She turns and says nice t-shirt. Then we kiss. It just happens. I don’t
know who made the first move. We explore each other’s mouths. Our
teeth clink. We start again. There is no law of diminishing returns. Our
embrace tightens. Strangers drift past us and make comments. It’s just
noise. My eyes are shut and we are on full ignore. My pants get uncomfortably
tight. I suggest another beer and head for the washroom. This
is a bit fast. On the way back to the rec room, some girl stops me in the
hall. Janet shows up. She slips my arm around her shoulder and leads
me toward a slow dance. Beach Boys In My Room. More grinding. I
move her to the armchair and we talk between kissing. Janet’s in grade
twelve as well. She’s planning to work after bumming around for the
summer. I’m off to UBC. I’m thinking another beer. Harry walks by,
kicks my foot and says it’s time to go. I’m glad.
In the Rambler Harry says, “You were getting kinda friendly.”
“Couldn’t get away,” I say.
“Janet’s a bit of geek,” he says. “Not a lotta friends.” I’m quiet.
The next day Kim calls. Says Janet wants to talk. I wonder how she
found my number. I don’t want to go to the beach. I’m busy later too.
No. I don’t want talk. Yeah, I’ll call you. R

Not a Chicken
By John Goossen
Jack books an afternoon dinner cruise and hopes for a waterfront walk to
fill the day. He wants a retirement that doesn’t look back. Instead, he trails Lily
darting through antique stores in a seaside town dressed up for tourists. Old
items that fill space and gather dust hold no attraction.
The Olde Treasure Store window features a large metal rooster. Jack stares at
the burgundy crown and red wattle. No one would have cut up tin and wasted
it like that. Especially not on his parents’ farm, once known as the estate of
Abram and Annette Peters. Jack could still hear the auctioneer’s gavel hit the
table. He will not buy someone else’s life.
“Oh, look at the chicken, Jack. Let’s check this place out.”
“Okay,” Jack concedes, “but that’s not a chicken, it’s a rooster.” Holding the
door open for Lily, he catches the scent of roses, not the usual musty store
aroma that makes his nose itch.
A wooden woman, roughly chiseled but smoothly finished, greets them.
“We never carved people from wood either,” says Jack as he studies the life
size figure.
Lily is well into the store by now and beckons to Jack with a cupped hand
digging the air, held high to get his attention. A pole lamp wobbles as he hurries
by it to catch up. She points to a homemade pine bench with a pullout bed.
“Didn’t you sleep in one of these?”
“How would I remember?” Jack counters. A mattress of straw
in the corner of his room is the only rest Jack recalls. His parents’
farm conjures up memories of dry dust and suppers fried in a
black pan. Jack and Abram laboured to make the land productive
after his mother died. Jack was twelve when the bank took charge.
They moved to a boarding house, repairing fences to survive.
Lily moves through the store like a hummingbird, not stopping
for long but examining any piece of interest along the way. She
turns over the bottom plate.
“Jack, look at this butter dish.”
“Hmmm.”
“It’s called Reminiscent Rose,” Lily announces as she hovers.
“Would you really use that?” Jack’s lips barely move. The colour evokes a
handkerchief, in a lighter shade, that his father carried but never used. It belonged
to his mother Annette.
“I’m getting it,” Lily announces, heading toward the till.
At the counter Jack’s eyes return to the wooden woman. He touches the
shoulder of her dress and his fingers glide down her arm. The pinkness of her
outfit creates a lump in his throat.
Jack steadies himself and stares down into the glass display case as Lily heads
toward the door. Regaining focus, he scans a mosaic of pocket watches, tie clips,
penknives and other metal memorabilia. Jack calls the clerk over.
Outside, Lily notices Jack carrying a small paper bag.
“What’s that?”
“A spoon. My mother’s name was on it.”
Jack takes Lily’s hand and sets the pace for the next store. R
Winter 2008 21

22 Rhubarb
A twenty-something daughter
tells her fifty-something mother
By J.L. Bond
A woman locking her condo door lifts her face to the clouds. She
tugs open the wrought iron gate which swings like jazz. Her
high heels click by pools of gleaming water. There’s a new
colour in her hair, and a new length to her skirt.
But she carries with her, like tiny bells on a bracelet,
the worries of the brother who won’t return her phone calls, and
the friend who plans to leave husband and church.
And her daughter’s been coaching her not to forget, Mother,
your fifties are almost history. Doll Face and Babe date from
the era of black and white movies. Men won’t amble behind you
and wolf whistle. And they probably won’t honk from their
convertibles and wink at you.
Even if this were to happen, her daughter tells her, don’t
turn around at the men, keep walking, Mother. And don’t slow
down to look at yourself in the shop windows.
Yet this woman swirls these thoughts out of her head like wine
from a carafe. Why? Because she is on her way to have lunch
with a high school acquaintance who’s in town on business again,
the once-nerd-now-widower, the one with the whiskey husky voice.
She is thinking the day is full of possibilities; there will be
no more rain. As she reaches for the bistro door, she looks up
at the blue belt of sky, and shakes her fiery hair.
The Mennonite Literary Society declares:
yo u a r e a me n n o n i t e if...
...y o u t h i n k y o u a r e
...y o u w a n t to b e
...y o u r f r i e n d s t h i n k y o u a r e, even if y o u d o n’t
...y o u’r e fighting it t o o t h-a n d-n a i l, b u t c a n’t q u i t e s h a k e it
if t h i s m e a n s y o u, please send Rh u b a R b y o u r w o r k . t h a n k y o u.
See Submissions (p. 2) and Coming Up (p. 11) for what’s new in Rhubarb.

It was an out of season thing, snow in
August.
We were just below Dawson, on the
Yukon River. If we’d known how close
we were, we would have pressed on,
though when we’d camped it was already
grey, showing signs of night that would
not come yet for another few weeks. I
woke in my orange tent, in a strange
light and a strange silence. My senses
knew it, in that vague half-asleep, just
before the mind computes: snow. I
pushed out of my sleeping bag, pulled
back the tent flap and smiled.
Brent and Gloria weren’t smiling.
They were as damp and gloomy as the
day. But that was nothing unusual.
Gloria had refused to let Brent share her
tent the first night out and the battle had
been going on all the way down the river.
At first Brent had been like a whiskeyjack
in his approach, dashing in to grab
what he could get, until we’d left Carmacks,
until the river veered away from
the road and there was no way to change
what we had begun, but to finish it. Then
he acted more like a wolf that follows after
the caribou, waiting for a sick animal
to lie down and give its body up.
We’d been told it would take ten
days to reach Dawson from Whitehorse.
Maybe it would have, if we’d paddled
constantly against the wind that smelled
of ice thickening at the river’s end.
Maybe, if we hadn’t spent three days
camped on the stones of Lake Laberge,
waiting for white-capped waves to sink
into calm, if we’d ignored the shifting
rain that swept out at us from high rifts
in the hills, billowing down through willow
and sweet-smelling poplar and dark
spruce. Maybe, if we hadn’t spent so long
in Carmacks, drying out, and again at
Burian’s Landing, where the cabins were
warm and the beds comfortable. It took
us three weeks.
Thou Shalt
By Marcia Lee Laycock
We ran out of food and ate Sunny-
Boy cereal for the last week, with a
handful of raisins thrown in for taste.
We added extra sugar to our tea and
studied the river map. The chart had the
advantage of an aerial view. Our perspective
was near-sighted, hindered by
curve and bend, by islands that followed
one on another
like a procession of
floats in a parade,
all decorated in
the same green, all
rimmed with stone
and sand. It seemed
we had been swept
into the mouth of a
great and powerful
country, swallowed
and carried along
the arterial flow of
it seemed w e h a d been swept
i n t o t h e m o u t h o f a g r e a t
a n d p o w e r f u l c o u n t r y,
swallowed a n d c a r r i e d
a l o n g t h e a r t e r i a l f l o w o f
something so h u g e, so en-
compassing t h e r e w o u l d b e
n o e n d to it.
something so huge, so encompassing
there would be no end to it. We would
go on. Though we could paddle we could
not control the one who carried us.
Perhaps that’s why, when we left the
river at Dawson, I felt I had betrayed
something sacred, as though I were
denying my identity, like an emigrant
child refusing to speak the language of
the land where it was born. I wanted
to put the canoe back into the river.
No. I wanted to put myself into it. But
it was snowing. In August. So I took a
hotel room where the door would not
stay closed without a chair propped
against it, where the mattress sagged and
smelled of beer, where deep angry voices
moaned through the walls and the floor
muffled coarse liquored laughter.
That night I joined Brent and Gloria
for a drink, out of courtesy to travelling
companions, smiled when I saw
his arm around her. The whiskey-jack
had returned. I wondered if someday
they would marry. Said no to their offer
Winter 2008 23

th e r e h a v e been t i m e s w h e n w e
c o u l d n o t see w h e r e w e w e r e .
24 Rhubarb
of a ride to Whitehorse the next day, left
half my drink on the table and walked
out, driven away by jarring music and the
games being played. When I slept I dreamt
the rain was sweeping toward me on the
river. I saw it come, stretched out my arms
and waited. But the
rain did not fall.
Snow blew, but did
not touch me.
I was married in August. It was a month
when I remembered that out of season
snow. My marriage has lasted longer than
I thought it would.There have been times
of rain and wind and rough water. There
have been hillsides of billowing green and
long streams of islands all looking the
same. There have been times when we
could not see where we were. There have
been whiskey-jacks and wolves and sick
animals. There has been hunger.
And sometimes I have thought of leaving.
I see myself stepping out, putting one
foot on the shore, trying to turn away. But
the river holds me. I am part of the rain
and wind and rough water. I could not
live without the arterial flow beneath me.
I have chosen it, chosen to remain, and in
the choosing, found love.
To leave would mean I would be left;
left with games played to jarring music, a
stale smell covering laughter; left dreaming
about rain that does not fall, and snow, out
of season. R

Afternoon Walk with Mosquitos and
Commentary via Simone Weil
and Mike Edmiston
By Jeff Gundy
The flood left a skim-coat of muck on leaves and branches,
windrows of sticks and drift here and there, and newly hatched
mosquitos in scary abundance—I tried to sit in the woods
by the creek but had a cloud around me whining and nipping
before I even got settled. The beauty of the world is the mouth
of a labyrinth. . . . And there God is waiting to eat you, Simone proclaimed,
so I walked some more, chased a squirrel from two logs drifted
across the lower path. Only two or three mosquitos at a time there.
Very few all summer, the creek bone-dry for weeks, then downpours
all night and brown water roaring all around by morning. If we can
build up the levee, stock up on sandbags, and put a shut-off valve
on the sewer, Mike said just this morning, we can keep the building dry
next time. I wandered on along the creek—it’s down to a trickle again—
and crossed the bridge that was under water two weeks ago.
The day was lovely, sunny, green. I wished for a stiff breeze, or a smudge
pot, or a hide of thick leather. The great trouble in life, Simone whispered,
is that looking and eating are two different operations. Nettles flowered
in the beds by the art building. With a long handle, we can close that valve
no matter how high the water gets, Mike said. There are people who try to raise
their souls like a man continually taking standing jumps, Simone muttered,
in the hopes that he will go right up to the sky. Where was the white butterfly
going, low and straight along the sidewalk? All week the monarchs
had been fluttering in the trees. All summer the turkey vultures have
been soaring past my top-floor window, roosting on the high lantern.
It was a glorious day, if only I didn’t mind the insects, if only
I could look and not be eaten. It was impossible not to mind.
Winter 2008 25

26 Rhubarb
Green Field in Salzburg
with Eye and Two Crows
By Jeff Gundy
“A little, but thoroughly.”
—Robert Walser, Jacob von Gunten
But the eye has no patience
and no interest in completion—
it gathers reams and miles of data,
heaps it up with no hope
of mastery or knowledge.
Beyond this meadow, the houses
of Alpenstrasse and Aigenstrasse,
the Salzach between them making
its cold rush toward the ocean,
then the woods and high meadows
of the Gaisberg, then everything else.
Crow in the mown grass, shiny
and patient, another, and suddenly
they’re mating or fighting,
then spooked by the tractor
they break apart. One flies off
with something—a nut?—in its beak.
Something small in a green field
just after first mowing,
green wet heaps of new grass
fragrant in the shining afternoon.

Damp Ode
By Jeff Gundy
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
—John Berryman, “Dream Song #14”
The poet in exile sits alone at a table for six, the only one
empty when he stepped into the room with his plate
and bottle of water. He eats some sort of ham loaf,
potato salad, shredded carrots, things he could point at.
There’s no menu, just food of various sorts behind the glass counters,
most of it not labeled, and the women serving seem unaware
that there are languages other than German. He’s not here
because he’s poor. He’s here because he’s cheap, and he forgot
his lunch again, and his wife isn’t answering her phone.
It’s crowded with locals eating fast as he is, in pairs or alone,
and one stocky older man settled firmly behind a tall beer,
determined to make it last an hour if not two. Go, go, go,
says the poet’s inner voice. The plate is bare. He’s still hungry,
but his body wants to be elsewhere, even if it’s out in the rain,
halfway up one of the little Salzburg mountains, lost in a cold mist.
Everyone in the room is quiet, though the voices and clatter
of cooks and servers seeps in warm and loud from the other room.
Go, go, said the bird.
I’ll go, feeling like the third or fourth man,
walk in the chilly rain back to my drab office filled with clouds
and self-pity, wishing for two big mugs of black American coffee.
I’ll buy two little bottles of schnapps on the way out
as the man before me did, climb the Nonnberg and drink
them both straight down in the graveyard by the chapel.
Yes, life is boring, here and everywhere, but why should we
say so, even today, when the morning ride through
the wet snow left me chilled and damp for hours, soggy pants
and glum shorts. I could have taken the bus, or taken
the umbrella and walked. The clouds swirl and billow
around the Untersberg like skirts, like smoke, like clouds,
like the foggy breath of time, and how can I ask for more?
Winter 2008 27

28 Rhubarb
Elk Velvet
By K. Manning Enns
I am elk velvet, a pulse
in every spot, beating
the pussy willow soft
temper of my heart: return
to me, return each measure
of soft memory,
that fragile light.
Place a finger here
at the bony tip where
self and phrasing
should begin.
Here you can find
a version of solitude,
find evidence of the green
shoots and leaves I nibbled,
restless, wanting and tasting
springtime on my tongue.
Know that I raised my hooves
and I ran out of the night and
into the morning’s hour.
Anyone could see each mark
made in the soil as I ran.
If you were watching you’d sense
the thrum of my lifeblood
as I leapt over pine needles and the deadfall
on the forest floor:
now I am afraid of nothing,
now it is more than I can ever bear.

Liese is ten years old, and she’s hiding
in a thicket of mulberry bushes, spying on
the children of the English-speaking family
next door. It’s not the first time. She’s
been watching them on and off since they
arrived in the colony center a week ago.
She’s new to Filadelfia too, but Liese
hasn’t come from far away. She’s always
lived in the Paraguayan Chaco, in the
Mennonite settlement. She’s never been
anywhere else. Her father got a job in
the peanut processing plant, so they left
their farm in the village and moved into
town. She’ll miss her village friends but
Liese knows the town is more important;
which the presence of these foreigners
confirms.
There are two boys and a girl. Liese
thinks they’re younger than she is, though
the oldest—a boy—may be close to her
age. He bosses the play. On this particular
day the children burst from their house
with an assortment of boxes, dolls, cars,
and trucks, and arrange them on the yard.
Each has a property of their own, it seems,
and they meet at other sites as well. The
girl takes care of the dolls and the boys
manage the vehicles.
The children range without caution
between sun and shade, as if oblivious to
the difference between them, and Liese
nearly calls, “Stay out of the boiling sun,”
as her mother does during the hottest
season of the year—just beginning now,
in November, the summer holiday—but
then she remembers this will give her away,
and besides, the children won’t understand
her German. But perhaps their skin won’t
burn as hers—pale and freckled—does.
Their hair is dark and hers is blond, heavily
tinged with red.
Liese knows the children come from
America. The adults around her speak
often of America or Canada, found (as it’s
been explained to her) on the top half of the
White
By Dora Dueck
earth ball, where Russia also lies, though
further around it, over the ocean. Canada
and America are overlapping places to her,
full of Mennonites too, but luckier, richer
ones who seem cheerful when they happen
to visit the Chaco, though their faces
sometimes glimmer with astonishment
Liese can’t quite trust. She fears they’re as
pessimistic about the prospects of Mennonites
here, in this hot and difficult place, as
the Chaco Mennonites are themselves.
Liese’s father
says their neighbors
moved to Paraguay
so the man can
help the farmers
with their problems
concerning cattle
and crops. Liese as-
sh e feels t h a t s h e’s l o o s e l y c o nstruc
ted a n d vulnerable, l i k e
a spider’s w e b , instead o f r e a l
a n d s u b s t a n t i a l a s t h e am e r i c a n
c h i l d r e n.
sumes that when the problems are solved,
the family will return to their home. She
expects, coming from America, the man
will have many answers already.
Her mouth may be hanging open.
(“Close your mouth,” her oldest sister
Tina, impatient as a broom, often hisses at
her, even when Liese is sure it’s closed.) But
she’s mesmerized by the strange sounds
of the children playing in English, comprehensible
to one another, amiable too it
seems, but a great provocation to her, like
a shrieking tree-full of wild parrots.
Then the children’s voices grow angry
and there’s a skirmish over one of the
boxes. The girl breaks away and dashes to
the house, yelling “Mom-my! Mom-my!”
as if injured. When she reaches the door,
the children’s mother steps through it.
Then Liese realizes “Mommy” is the English
word for Mama.
How clever she considers herself this
morning, deciphering a piece of their
speech! But hard on the back of that
pleasure, like an unexpected shiver in the
heat, is her consciousness of being alone,
Winter 2008 29

30 Rhubarb
hidden, as uneasy as a secret. She feels that
she’s loosely constructed and vulnerable,
like a spider’s web, instead of real and
substantial as the American children. Her
desire to know them increases; it swells as
she watches them disappear into the house
behind their mother, minus the scattered
signs of their make-believe habitation—
their boxes and dolls, cars and trucks. Liese
wants their language, their strangeness,
their confidence. She heard the mother
soothe the girl and then the boys who
shuffled near, heads down and anxious,
and she wants that same consolation, that
same brave humility. She wants everything
about them.
In the days that follow, Liese studies
the American family as much as she can,
whenever her mother or Tina haven’t discovered
a chore for her to do. She stares
from the verandah, or from her perch in
the mulberry hedge. She sees that while
at home, the children’s mother wears
pretty dresses with narrow waists and full
skirts, but dressing up—for the store, or
a meeting perhaps—she puts on one of
two sleek outfits with narrow skirts and
straight lines, the one a light brown color
like the soil of their garden but clean and
cool-looking, the other a dark blue, almost
grey, like storm clouds but not noisy or
threatening.
On her dressed-up occasions the
woman’s face is bright and her lips redder
than the lips of any other woman Liese
knows. She feels this is probably the sheen
of worldliness against which the preachers
warn and it troubles her on behalf of
the woman and her entire family, because
she’s beautiful and seems so kind. Even
spotting the foreign family in the town’s
church the next Sunday doesn’t alleviate
her apprehension.
Liese approaches her father under the
algorroba tree after the service. He’s peeling
a grapefruit with his pocket-knife. He
cuts the peel away in one continuous strip
that drops onto the hard earth in a cheerful
coil of white and yellow.
“Papa,” she says, “will the American
lady beside us go to heaven? I think she
wears lipstick.”
Liese’s father doesn’t look up. He tugs
off a segment of the grapefruit. “Why
not?” he says.
Why not? Startling. Room to maneuver
then. Liese won’t probe further lest he’d
made a mistake, lest she squander its possibilities.
She drops to the ground beside
her father’s low three-legged stool, takes
the grapefruit wedges he offers her, slurps
their sweet juiciness. Many years later she’ll
recollect that this was the moment her
dream to move to Canada or America, was
conceived. As far as she’s concerned, her
father gave her permission. To be someone
else.
Liese hangs on to the dream long after
the English-speaking family returns to
their own country. She hangs on in spite
of Mama’s resistance to any mention of
it. Working in the local Co-op and then a
German pension in Asuncion, the capital,
in the years after high school, Liese mentions
it often. Mama’s unhappiness over
the notion grows. Mama isn’t so fond of
the primitive, dusty Chaco herself—she
admits as much—but her loyalty is fierce
by now, her stories of hardships endured
on its behalf irrefutable, and all this
achieved through a dogged submission
to her husband Jakob, Liese’s father, who
believes it was God and not the Mennonite
Central Committee that brought them
to Paraguay. Mama thinks Liese’s desire
to emigrate is a criticism directed at her.

She argues against it and sometimes she
cries.
But when she gets it into her head that
Liese is attached to Alberto, a Paraguayan
of the Spanish-speaking variety, not Mennonite,
whom Liese mentioned in a letter
from Asuncion—attached and likely to
marry him—Mama panics.
“I was thinking,” she writes, “why don’t
you go to Canada for a while? Stay with the
cousins. You need a change.”
Liese understands the reason for her
mother’s reversal and says it’s ridiculous.
Can’t a person go for an ice cream with
someone without wanting to marry him?
“You have no idea about Paraguayan
men,” Mama retorts by return mail.
Mama’s letters prod, poke, push. They
arrive in the capital like volleys, and then
one day the source of them, Mama herself,
is getting off the bus, is standing outside
Liese’s door. “All your life you talk big
about leaving,” she says. “Now I agree with
you, so you better get going. I’ve already
written the cousins.” She takes Liese to
MennoTour to get her papers and tickets;
she says that she and Papa will pay.
Mama’s unexpected arrival disarms
Liese, stirs her love for her mother. Mama’s
right, of course. It’s what she’s wanted for
a long time. She wants it still.
So Liese leaves her homeland. It’s 1972;
she’s nearly twenty-two.
When Liese thinks back now about
coming to Canada, she remembers white.
That continuous vista of clouds beneath
the flight. Thick, sun-catching cumulus,
as if the entire cotton harvest of Paraguay,
which she was leaving behind forever, had
been spilled in farewell along the path she
had to follow to leave. Not directly from
the field, of course, but washed and dried,
all the seeds and grime picked out of it.
And the cousins’ small white house,
and how she wondered, when they first
stopped in front of it, whether it was
freshly painted. Wondered, but didn’t ask.
Had never asked.
And the ironed white sheets of her
bed in their basement, like an envelope
she slipped into, exhausted, and slept in
soundly until late the next morning. Almost
until noon.
She has come to associate white with
a kind of happiness, even, perhaps, with
perfect peace. The sense of infinite potential,
for example, that fog suggests,
pressing its pearly bulk against the kitchen
window, wrapping the yard away from
her and breathing quietly, closely, until
the sun dissolves it.
Or the radiance of
the bedroom some
Saturday mornings
when she sits in
bed in her bathrobe,
reading, the
daylight filtered
through the white
sheers of the window,
the outside
ma n y y e a r s l a t e r s h e’ll r e c o ll
e c t t h a t t h i s w a s t h e m o m e n t
h e r d r e a m to m o v e to ca n a d a
o r am e r i c a, w a s c o n c e i v e d. as
f a r a s s h e’s c o n c e r n e d, h e r fa-
t h e r g a v e h e r per mission. to b e
s o m e o n e else.
world a blur through that veil and the
inside sweet with silence, with time alone
for a book or the newspaper, Johnnie out
for breakfast or golf with his friends, when
it seems that the past and the future can
be grasped as a whole, the way an entire
life can be grasped, they say, just before
drowning or dying in an accident. Simply
seeing it and knowing without fear that
it’s fine; it’s okay.
On the flight from Toronto, where
she’d landed from Asuncion via Buenos
Aires, she had the seat by the window
and a woman travelling with her small
daughter sat next to her. The child was
restless and clamored over Liese with
sharp, bony elbows and knees to press
her nose against the window. She saw the
clouds and squealed, “Mommy, Mommy,
Mommy!”
It seemed a good omen, the kind of
omen Liese liked to collect. Something
others would think inconsequential and
she found remarkable: her first English
word—“Mommy!”—re-appearing on
her way to Canada like the end mark of
a parenthesis opened more than a decade
ago. She said “No speak English” to the
woman, and grinned at the girl, grinned
at her until her jaw ached while the child
Winter 2008 31

32 Rhubarb
crawled back and forth over her lap.
Neither Liese nor her parents had
ever seen Mama’s cousins Nettie and Alvina
who lived in Winnipeg—the cousins
Liese would stay with—but they had a
photograph, a studio portrait of them
together, wearing white blouses with collars
of crocheted lace, their partial smiles
nearly identical. They seemed old to Liese,
looking at the photo, and she said so, but
Mama told her they weren’t that old at all,
she believed they were only a few years
older than she was. Late fifties, early sixties
perhaps.
Mama explained what she knew. Her
eldest brother—their father—fled Russia,
just as Liese’s parents’ families had, but
since he saw “the writing on the wall,” as it
were, before they did, he got into Canada
during an opening in the 1920s. Instead of
being sent to Paraguay, as the later refugees
were. Mama’s brother found a wife
in Canada. They were both long dead but
they’d had the two daughters, Nettie and
Alvina. One of them married, Mama said,
only to have her husband die suddenly of
a stroke half a year later. The short-lived
bride moved back home to her sister and
they’d lived together ever since, in the
house where they grew up.
When Liese arrived in the Winnipeg
terminal, she recognized the cousins immediately
but she couldn’t recall which
one was the tragic widow; she couldn’t
even remember which name went with
which woman. She must have been anticipating
them as one, Nettie and Alvina,
linked without further thought like the
sing-song syllables of a nursery rhyme.
Nettie and Alvina introduced themselves,
but in the surrounding noise of arrivals
and greetings, and the awkwardness
of their own hurried mutual appraisals,
Liese couldn’t focus and so she lost that opportunity
to fix their separate identities as
well. She was looking for signs of grief on
one of the faces and they, she felt, seemed
surprised at her—that she was so modern
perhaps? She wore her reddish-blond hair
long and straight and parted in the middle,
and she had clunky shoes and a short skirt
as was seventies fashion, though her skirt
wasn’t nearly as short as it soon would be,
after she re-hemmed it in the privacy of
her migration lodgings, far from Mama’s
piercing disapproval.
Both women wore glasses, and had
comfortable, similar faces, though one was
plumper than the other. Their hair was
grayish brown and tightly curled. Liese
smelled fresh hair-perming solution as she
received their embraces of welcome. Flattered,
she wondered if they rose early that
morning to give each other permanents
or if they patronized a beauty salon. They
spoke German to her but Liese noticed it
had suffered; it was thoroughly infected
with English, of course. She was pleased to
hear it, however, and felt herself leaning towards
their clumsy cadences as if linguistic
loss were contagious. She was planning to
be fluent in English in no time at all.
She was ashamed, though, not knowing
their names, not recalling enough about
them to keep them apart. Mama insisted
Liese would owe the cousins a huge debt of
gratitude for letting her live with them and
her predicament seemed a hint of what being
an immigrant might entail, obligations
she was likely to fail at but could never
forget. And without her parents near to
assist. But the cousins seemed warm and
genuinely glad to see her, even deferential,
so perhaps she could find a way out of her
stupidity without them discovering it.

The women took turns telling Liese
things or asking questions about her trip
and her parents and siblings back in Paraguay
until they’d exited the building and
packed her two bags in the trunk of their
tan-colored car. Then both of them—Nettie
and Alvina, driver and passenger, whoever
was which—concentrated on driving
and Liese was left to her first impressions
of Winnipeg, a city surprisingly calm and
empty-looking, full of trees and lawns of
an unassuming, dignified green, not the
lush and steamy green of Asuncion, which
seemed inferior now, and where, contrary
to what she’d claimed to her mother, she
was falling in love with Alberto because
she was bored. He professed his passionate,
undying love for her the night before
she left, trying to kiss her at the gate of the
MennoHeim, but she laughed at him and
pulled away. She didn’t believe his avowals
but no longer needed to hear him making
them either.
Before Liese had time to reach more
conclusions about the city where she’d
landed, they were pulling into the driveway
of a small, square, and very white house. Its
foundation was rimmed with a profusion
of flowers in various shades of pink. The
effect seemed too sentimental for Liese’s
vision of Canada, but it seemed generous
too, which surely boded well, she thought,
for the work of becoming herself that lay
before her.
One sister said to the other, opening the
car trunk, “Well Nettie, why don’t you take
Liese down to her room?”
The woman who led Liese down the
stairs into the basement had a mole on the
far edge of her jaw and Liese told herself
firmly, Nettie is the sister with the mole.
Nettie took Liese into a tiny room beside
the stairs. She showed her the bed, a narrow
closet with five empty hangers, the
three-drawer dresser. She pointed to the
hangers on the closet rod. Then she was
still and silent for a moment, as if considering
what else she could show their guest.
“Ah!” she said, as if she’d finally remembered.
She opened the top drawer
of the dresser. They’d collected some
things for her, Nettie said: small samples
of soap and shampoo and flat perfume
strips inside clear paper wrappers—the
kind that come in bills from department
stores. Nettie picked up one of the perfume
packets and told Liese that if she opened
it and rubbed the fragrance strip on her
wrists, it was like putting on that expensive
perfume the stores wanted people to
buy, the one named
and pictured on the
paper. “You stick
one in your purse,”
she said, “and you
use it on a special
evening, just before you go into the room.
Make yourself smell pretty.”
Nettie went on to say, sympathetically
it seemed, that Liese would probably not
be able to afford real perfume for a while.
Not that buying perfume was urgent in any
case, she said, but Liese was young and so
perhaps it mattered more than to someone
of her and Alvina’s age. That’s why they’d
been saving the packets for her, ever since
they learned she was coming, instead of
opening them as they generally did for
their own curiosity.
“Canada,” Nettie added, “is a good
country.”
Liese had a small bottle of scent along
but she didn’t mention it to Nettie, supposing
it cheap and inappropriate here.
“Thank you Nettie,” she said. “Thank you
very much.” In the light of arriving in Canada
and Liese’s relief at securing the name
of this relative with the mole-marked
face, the sacrifice of the samples seemed
remarkable, more than she deserved. Saying
those thank yous, her voice began to
break. Nettie patted Liese’s arm and said
she would leave her alone to unpack but
would soon call her for supper.
There wasn’t much in Liese’s two leather
cases to put away and she had everything
hung or placed into drawers before she
was summoned to eat. People in the Chaco
who knew about life in Canada or America
had advised her not to take much along;
everything would be far nicer up there,
they said, and easy enough to get as soon
wh e n liese t h i n k s b a c k n o w
a b o u t c o m i n g to ca n a d a, s h e
remembers w h i t e.
Winter 2008 33

34 Rhubarb
as she had a job, and money.
Liese drew one of the perfume packets
out of the drawer. She opened it. She
slipped the paper out of its sheath, held it
to her nose. It gave off a whiff of sophistication.
She waited, contented, sitting on
the bed, hands in her lap, her eyes assessing
the low-ceilinged room. She liked its
simplicity, its coolness, its dimness. They
didn’t have many basements in the Chaco.
A basement, she thought now, was like a
cave, like a cocoon, in which to rest and
gain strength to foray in a long-awaited
world.
She heard Nettie’s eager voice—the
call for supper. Liese rubbed the scent
of the paper onto
her wrists and ran
upstairs, arriving at
the table breathless
and smiling. The
cousins smiled back
at her. Their hands
were already folded
for the table prayer.
If they told her she
smelled nice or
questioned her for
wasting a packet,
she’d decided, she’d
compliment them
by declaring this was one of those special
evenings Nettie had mentioned. Her first
in their house.
Neither remarked on the perfume,
however. The dose available on paper must
have been too weak to last.
It didn’t matter. The sensation of the
strip against her skin, the brief aroma of a
new Canadian ritual lingered with her as if
it rendered her more exotic than ever, even
to herself. She was hungry and agreeable to
everything. The homemade tomato soup
and bread were delicious.
After supper, Liese helped with the
dishes, then admitted, to Alvina’s persistent
inquiries, that yes, she was tired.
The cousins’ voices wove around her like
a lullaby, sung in duet, suggesting she get
her night clothes, take a bath, go to bed.
The women showed her the bathroom.
Nettie asked Liese if she knew how to turn
on the taps and Liese said, yes, she did. Of
course, she did, she added, though she kept
her tone light and gracious; they certainly
had taps in the Chaco, she said. She didn’t
mention that they’d installed a water line
into the kitchen just a few months ago,
such a help to her mother, who had always
drawn from a tap on the porch, but she did
say that water was generally scarce in the
Chaco, so they showered instead of bathed,
using a pail of water overhead—a pail with
holes in it. Nettie and Alvina seemed to
find this interesting.
Then the cousins withdrew, pulling the
bathroom door closed behind them like a
final caring cluck. Liese secured her hair in
two loose braids. She took off her clothes.
She drew an inch or two of tepid water and
knelt in it, dabbing the water to her body
until every part of it was moistened. Then
she got out and dried herself and pulled
on her thin summer nightgown. She padded
downstairs and crawled between the
starched and flawless white sheets of her
basement bed. There she lost the last of her
vivid daydream of the future.
It had begun to disappear the moment
she landed—she knows this now—but
the last of it disappeared in that prim Canadian
bed. What was she thinking as her
eyes closed? What did she release with a
satisfied sigh, just before falling away—so
carelessly—from everything, new and old
colliding, into slumber?
She can’t remember.
She should have written something
down. She should have had a notebook
on the flight , blocked that pesky girl from
her lap, set down what she visualized ahead
of her as her gaze and dreams locked into
the clouds. On the airplane, suspended in
that space between ending and beginning,
she must have known—in that clear way
one sees what one wants before one has
it—what she hoped for, what she expected.
She was starting life over in a way more
definite, more decisive, than people usually
attempted. Not escaping, but choosing.
Switching countries. Separating destiny
from origin.
If she’d recorded this, she thinks now,
she could decide whether anything came
true in the manner she hoped. She reminds
herself the landscape of her former desires
can never be fully recovered. It still adheres
to a girl who hid, who watched, who envied,
and then a young woman wrapped in
memories of white. Liese no longer thinks
of herself as an immigrant and her reasons
for coming are thin. As good as gone. She
may never know, at this distance, if they
were good enough. R

Children alone in
the hospitals
By M. Travis Lane
“I Would Have Told You” (John 14:2)
Children alone in the hospitals
watching machines tick time away,
a world of closed doors closing—
each empty day holds emptiness
like a last cup.
At the nursing station stands
an artificial Christmas tree
with loops of caterpillar foil.
Outside the drowsy snowflakes fall.
Does sleep, which comes, at last,
unwanted or desired
bring only another hospital,
grander perhaps?
Keeper of all things
keep the now. The screens
that mark their passage, their ebb tides,
malfunction, show us snow.
Sleep dear child
By M. Travis Lane
Sleep dear child, the night is warm
and you may not be lost.
Let the green curtains of the trees
hang over you, and moss
raise its soft feathers around your head.
No noises now, the wind
won’t startle branches into aches,
no birds cry out, the gnats
will flicker out.
Even the moon can’t find you here
dense, as this dream forest is,
nor stars nor mapping fireflies or
the phosphorous reachings of old logs.
You have gone under blankets of green sleep.
Clouds cover you.
The weathers pass you by.
You are not lost, not yet, not yet
or not unfindable, or lost
but only from our sight.
Another house
has called for you, a parent,
a wild home.
Winter 2008 35

36 Rhubarb
Peter’s father didn’t die
By Susan Plett
yesterday but he was pretty sure he was having a heart attack and after all the poking and
prodding no heart attack this time, let’s run some tests and Peter’s voice breaks and if he
hadn’t been short of breath they never would have found it and what a close call and
isn’t God good and I think of my own father healthy as a horse on Monday and DOA:
heart attack on Wednesday no angiograms or close calls and sure He’s good and heaven
knows I don’t want a predictable God, but what I do want is to sit across a Scrabble board
and watch my father get all frowny and fussy when he’s losing and maybe he could tease
my mother until she rolls her eyes and sticks out her tongue and would it be too much to
ask for him to meet the grandson who carries his name but yes let’s thank God that
Peter’s mother won’t grow old alone in a nursing home where noone knows what she
meant to anyone except maybe a daughter a thousand miles away who just for the
moment has no idea what to say to someone who can’t believe how blessed we all are

What you need the least
Ike hasn’t been at breakfast for five days.
About a week ago Viola told him to leave
the house. That’s the word. Everyone’s
noticed his pickup parked in front of the
three storey green-shutter-place apartments,
not just the widows watching from
their windows.
Ten years ago that was me. One Saturday
night that stretched into a Sunday
morning I come home and Helen meets
me at the door. It’s the church or the bar,
she says. It doesn’t matter that the farming
gets done, she says, or that there’s
enough to eat and the roof doesn’t leak. I
hear people talking at church, she says. I
won’t have it. The kids and I won’t be at
church anymore with you at home sleeping
it off. You either come to church with
us on Sunday, or leave. It’s us or the bar.
Not both.
Some decisions come faster than others,
so while she and the kids went to church
that Sunday, I stayed home and packed two
bags for the week. I thought that leaving
right then might change some things for
her, or for me, or both. It did. Within a
month I had moved my whole closet out,
along with a few boxes of paperbacks.
Ike Dyck’s decision would have been
about women rather than booze. There’d
been talk like that about Ike and Viola for
years already. Often he’d say he was going
to some conference or other in Winnipeg
and then he’d stay the weekend. People
noticed and they got used to it. You’d hear
some guys saying that Viola was too easy
on Ike. But I guess a woman is not likely
to go to church alone for too long if she
hears people talking.
I pick up one book a week from the
MCC thrift store—crime story or mystery
if I can find it—but today I see Ike Dyck
shopping for kitchen appliances across
the racks of men’s wear, so I stop to watch
By Paul Krahn
him. What I really want to do is walk over
there and hit him. Ike farms 15,000 acres
with his brother, Norm. Most of that land
they’ve bought from smaller farmers like
me who decide that the risk’s not worth
it anymore. Watching Ike shop in a thrift
store has a certain beauty to it. Hands
grimy from some repair work, he picks up,
turns over, peers into, and shakes things—
a toaster, a coffee maker, an electric frying
pan, and a countertop deep fryer with a
cracked and yellowed
plastic lid.
Ike’s here because
he’d rather
be seen by the Mexicans
and immigrant
mothers than
shop at the CO-OP hardware. That’s the
second reason why I want to hit him. By
now everyone in town has heard anyway.
Everybody’ll notice what Ike says and does
these days. They’ll talk about it at home, in
coffee shops, at church. To me that seems
fair. It’s been everybody’s business so far,
why not now? That’s the price you pay for
taking that kind of freedom.
His hands shake for a cigarette as he
fumbles through a shelf of mugs and
glassware. Tanned and silver-grey, his face
is obvious. He’s a guy you notice. A guy
people say hello to. They want him to say
hello to them. Women want to dance with
him at socials, and a lot of guys who aren’t
like him, want to hit him. That’d be reason
number three. Instead it crosses my mind
to offer him a cigarette.
Ike walks over to the checkout to pay.
He dumps the stuff on the counter and
then asks if he can buy the shopping basket
too. He says, I won’t do big loads of laundry,
see? He smiles. This is just the right
size too. The woman at the counter points
out to him that it’s a shopping basket.
I know it’s a shopping basket, he says,
640 a c r e s u s e d t o b e a f a r m o f
s u b s t a n c e. yo u u s e d t o b e a b l e t o
l i v e o f f o f t h a t m u c h l a n d. fe e d
y o u r f a m i l y a n d t h e n s o m e .
Winter 2008 37

38 Rhubarb
but I’ll pay you for it. Can I give you 10
bucks? The woman at the counter yields
and smiles and takes his money.
For my whole life I’ve despised what he
does. At breakfast at the Sunrise Café Ike
and his brother Norm would sit away from
us, at the window. They’d order and sip
and eat in silence, while the rest of us sat
and talked at the big middle table. They’d
get up and leave before we’re done. The
most they’d do is nod.
640 acres used to be a farm of substance.
You used to be able to live off of that much
land. Feed your family and then some.
Today they’ll tell you to buy more, or sell
out, because you can’t afford the risk. The
banks and ag-dealers tell you to expect
one bad year for every two good ones,
and everyone knows that if you get two
bad years in a row, you could be finished.
Next to no credit at the bank to seed the
next year, so you look to sell. You hope you
get what the land’s worth. That’s when Ike
and Norm show up.
One morning a couple of years ago—a
wet year—everything looked bad. Ike and
Norm get up ahead of us as usual, but this
time Ike walks over to us, looks at me and
says, So, wet enough yet for ya? He waits.
People keep eating. Then he says, If you
think maybe this’ll be the last year, let me
know. I’ve got a fair price in mind. Then
he smiles, adjusts his cap and walks out. A
few weeks later I get an offer to purchase
in the mail for the 320 acre piece that’s
sandwiched between two of his pieces, for
$1200 an acre. My best piece. I don’t sell
though. I couldn’t after that and I hated
him for asking.
Ike heads down the aisle toward the
exit, his arms full. I grab Agatha Christie’s
Sad Cypress and walk to the cashier, drop a
quarter on the counter and follow him out.
I push through the first set of doors in time
to open the second one for him. Thanks, he
says. He doesn’t see me though. He walks
out and heads for his truck, parked just up
ahead. I follow him. I want to say something
to him. At his truck I cut in front of
him again so that he sees me.
Unlocked? I say. He stiffens and hesitates.
I reach for the passenger door anyway
and open it. He lifts the bags too quick
and one catches, tears, and spills mugs and
glasses onto the curbside.
Goddammit, he says. What. The. Hell.
He crouches and starts picking up pieces,
using what’s left of the bag to collect them
in one hand. What the hell, Andy? he says,
not looking up. What do you want eh?
Viola’s phone number? Check the phone
book, under my name.
Thanks for the offer, I say. Maybe I
should, since you aren’t known for your
generosity.
Asshole, he says, straightening, one hand
filled with glass and ceramic shards.
Yeah, I say. You’re in good company.
Ike turns to face me. Can I help you?
he says.
Without stepping back I pull out my
smokes. Cigarette? I say.
Huh?
Smoke?
Oh, uh, sure, he says. Thanks. He pulls
one out of the pack and reaches back to
put the bag of shards in his truck.
Sorry ‘bout that, I say offering him my
lighter. So how’s it going, really?
Better now, he says, exhaling. I hope the
rest of this shit works, he says.
They usually check it all, I say. At least
if it doesn’t, you didn’t pay much.
There is that.

Warm day, I say. Still too wet to seed,
eh?
Yeah, probably. I guess it’ll be TV time
again tonight.
I’ve got a few beers back at my place,
I say. No better time for a cold one then
Friday.
He looks me in the eye. You sure about
that, he says.
Whatever, I say. It’s your call. I’ll be out
on my back deck with a beer in a few minutes.
I’ll put a few burgers on the grill.
I’ve gotta get rid of this first, though,
he says.
No problem, I say. Won’t change my
day. You know where I live. So maybe I’ll
see’ya.
Ike nods and walks around the front of
the truck, I’ll think about it, he says as he
gets in and closes the door. As he drives off
I watch and ask myself what the hell I’m
doing. I think I know the answer though.
Helen and the kids stayed in the bigger
house on the farm, while you bought a
two-bedroom bungalow in town. That
first Spring was tough. You’d go back to
the yard to work. You’d pull the drill out
of the quanset, fill it with seed, and watch
the windows of your own house. You’d
look for the kids to come running out to
watch or beg for a ride. Before you’d have
been annoyed, and now you wait for it. But
they don’t come, and you drive the tractor
and drill off of the yard alone.
It’s like that for Ike now too. Tomorrow
morning it’ll take him 15 minutes to find
a one-inch socket in the machine shed on
his own yard, because the whole time he’ll
wonder what his wife and kids are doing
inside his own house.
Today though Ike, you know, I know,
what’s waiting. Dirty dishes. The hint of
socks and stale smoke. A toilet bowl that
needs to be scrubbed. Beer in the fridge
and an open potato chips bag on the
counter.
Time could change it all. I could worry
about what people’ll think. But I’m trying
to live better today. Trying to make the best
of these things that I like the least, and
need the most. R
That lizard on a shelf
of stone
By Bill Fast
That lizard on a shelf of stone
might be the stone itself
but for a lifting eye.
Unmoving in the blazing air
he slants his staring gaze
into an endless sky.
A million years encrust his side
but cannot hide the thrust
of life that yearns to fly.
Secure in armorplated skin
he thus seals in his fate;
and so, I fear, do I.
Winter 2008 39

l a c k pu d d i n g a n d Rhubarb pastr ies
These little pastries make good canapes or starters. The mixture sounds bizarre but is delicious.
Ingredients
1 small onion, chopped
200 g rhubarb (about 1 stick) cut into 1 cm slices
8 slices black pudding about 4 cm diameter and 1 cm thick
16 sheets filo pastry about 15 cm square
100 ml dry cider or white wine or water
Olive oil for frying
Black pepper, nutmeg.
A good quality black pudding is needed.
Procedure
Fry the skinned black pudding slices in a little olive oil using a heavy frying pan until they are lightly
crisped on the outside. Reserve. Add the onion to the pan (with a little extra oil if
necessary) and soften without browning. Add the rhubarb and stir for a minute or so. Add the cider and
simmer gently until the rhubarb has disintegrated to form a thick sauce. Season with black pepper and a
little grated nutmeg.
Place two squares of pastry on top of each other; place a teaspoon of the sauce in the middle and put
a slice of black pudding on top. Moisten the edges of the pastry and fold over the contents, pinching the
edges together to form a seal.
Bake in a moderate oven (160 C) on a greased baking tray for about 20 -30 minutes (until the pastry is
golden).
Eat while warm. This quantity suffices for a canape for four or a good starter for two.
Serves 4
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Rhubarb
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40 Rhubarb
Subscribe to, or renew, your Rhubarb !

An unfriendly takeover
Mierau, Maurice. Fear Not. Turnstone Press, 2008.
Reviewed by Leonard Neufeldt
A full-canter gospel song
begins, “Sweet are the promises,/
kind is the word.” Not so
the counter words of Maurice
Mierau’s new and very important
book of poems, Fear Not,
dedicated to Mierau’s father, “a
strong and skeptical reader of
the Bible.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer declared the time of
words over, and both his martyrdom and the silencing
it delivered personally confirmed his statement.
Yet words have continued, most of them in the
service of unquestioned religious and cultural conventions
(including belief and interpretive systems,
unexamined norms and new generic universals
already dead). Mierau’s title, which appears in the
Bible 80 times, is a parody of itself in that it asks us
not to fear the fearful—the wholesale contesting of
such words and the deeply inscribed habits of mind
and feeling they minister to even while his resistance
takes seriously the forms these words have taken and
even though their deconstruction offers only itself
as counter words.
One can’t deal with the daring quixotry of
Mierau’s poems apart from their multiple planes
of parody. “Parody,” a term passed down to us by
the ancient Greeks, literally means “another way”
or the road alongside the usual one; in classical
literature it meant “a song sung beside.” Over the
centuries parody has usually been parasitic and
imitative—it depends on the host text and imitates
it in distorted forms such as caricature, burlesque
or satirical palimpsest in order to mock, censure or
perhaps reform. Fear Not offers numerous examples
of this kind of parody. “Desperate (at Your Wits
End),” mimics the psalmist’s desperate prayer for
help to mock today’s religion of self-absorption and
desperate self-gratification: “I whine and complain
and you/ have a lot of time for that, which/is great
Reviews
oh God” (p. 52). “Needing Peace” re-writes the
many cries for peace in the Bible with an imitation
of Colonel John McCrae’s wearisome “In Flanders
Field”: “1 In Afghanistan the poppies grow/ 2 beside
roadside bombs, row on/row” (p. 71).
But, in the spirit of a much more complicated
and unsettling post-modern parody, Mierau’s mimicking
of passages in the New Testament gospels
and epistles and Old Testament psalms often ends
up imitating the independent-nugget progression
of Proverbs. Consider, to begin with, chapter and
verse divisions in the Bible, which have been with us
since the tenth century. Mierau’s poems are written
as biblical chapters comprised of numbered verses.
And whether the first stanza of a poem flashes a
verse in the gospels, epistles or psalms, many of the
poems take on the features of the separate, discontinuous
sayings of Proverbs. The narrative impulse
of the former books is disrupted, giving way to the
aphoristic impulse of wisdom literature such as
found in Proverbs. When the story-telling form of
the gospels is retained, the narrative undoes itself:
2 And my grandfather would not
stop singing Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. . .
3 And he would not stop, not
run, sign the confession. He
practically shot himself.
4 And courage is rational as long
as you float.
5 He sank.
6 He sank with the bullet in his
head on February 2nd, 1938.
7 And the wind died down and it
Became perfectly calm. (p. 16)
But Mierau’s poems often take an additional,
for him crucial, step: the so-called wise saying or
redeeming moment becomes the wisdom of unsaying
and nay-saying. Relentlessly so. For instance, in
“Doubt” (p. 32), a poem opening with the stupefaction
of a blind man given sight by Jesus, the last four
stanzas offer the following parodic turns:
3 And the officer was willing to
believe anything, another great
example.
4 “Enjoy your exotic moment
responsibly,” he said.
5 Jesus would have talked to
Winter 2008 41

Katrina, quietly. Anything is
possible.
6 To doubt, Ludwig said, you must
spend many years not doubting.
“Doubt,” like the majority of poems in this
collection, exposes to parody both texts and conventions
associated with them, almost signals an
unfriendly takeover of them (the consolation of
rescuing and revitalizing something worth saving
in them or a substitution of antinomianism in their
stead), only to parody itself in its very parodic maneuvers
against text and conventions. This is parody
as hard-boiled deconstruction on behalf of integrity.
The poems survey once assuring and still haunting
but worn-out conventions as well as inanities
and profanities of contemporary pop culture—to
wit, the modern prodigal son writing his father a
somewhat unreliable confession to which his father
frames a response that indicts him as worse than the
son. (pp. 7-8).
The title of each section of Fear Not ends with
an ellipsis whose ambiguity invites puzzlement
and wariness (e.g., “Troubled By Language And . .
.”). “And what?” we ask. The answer soon becomes
apparent: “follow the parody; be careful.” As careful,
I might add, as Mierau is about the danger that his
parody of a world of unquestioned habitude and
hollow gratifications itself becomes a played-out
habit. Fear Not is a tough act and, for the author, a
tough act to follow.
A Teen Novel for Adults
Toews, Miriam. The Flying Troutmans.Alfred A
Knopf, 2008.
Reviewed by Edna Froese
Despair “recycled into dark
comedy”—this is how The Flying
Troutmans by Miriam Toews
aptly summarizes itself. Narrator
Hattie Troutman, sister to
mentally ill Min whose latest
descent into suicidal despair sets
the plot in motion, has learned
her mother’s trick of thinking
in dark comedy, but, unlike her
mother, cannot “absorb Min’s despair.” When Min’s
11-year-old daughter Thebes calls Hattie in Paris
42 Rhubarb
with an SOS, Hattie flies home immediately, yet
can’t face the responsibility of taking care of Thebes
and her 15-year-old brother Logan. Her panicked
response to Min’s plea to “help [her] die” is to pack
up the children in the van and take to the road in
search of the children’s father Cherkis, long since
out of the picture and without any known recent
address, presuming that he will be a willing and/or
capable parent.
The road trip is a familiar plot device that depends
on a successful balance of the inevitable and
the surprising. Of course, their beat-up van will
have enough mechanical problems to provide comedy
and suspense, both of which are increased when
Logan drives—without a license. And, of course, the
travellers will meet many strangers, some of whom
will offer direction, whether geographic or psychological.
For such journeys are almost never solely
about the proposed destination. What’s crucial is the
interaction of the travellers as each journeys back
through memory and simultaneously acts as guide,
overtly or otherwise, for his or her fellow travellers.
There’s black material sufficient here for a grim
sojourn in the underworld of mental illness: sibling
rivalry (Min seems to have had a prolonged desire
to kill her younger sister), abandoned children, and
faithless lovers, not to mention various self-destructive
efforts to escape the pain. Thebes is a compulsive
talker, throwing words against an unbearable
silence and adopting personae of all sorts. Logan
hides, ad nauseam, in his black hoodie and his music,
and prefers shooting baskets to speaking. Hattie
drinks and smokes pot, occasionally phoning her
ex-boyfriend in Paris. All of them consistently resist
reasonable action, common sense, and anything
remotely conventional, perhaps because the agony
of living with Min has made common sense itself
nonsensical.
Because of the sustained zaniness of both plot
and characters, the atmosphere comes dangerously
close to sitcom, despite the bleakness of the human
situation. The road trip itself creates the episodic
temporality of a sitcom. There seems to be no necessary
order to the incidents except as determined by
the city of departure (Winnipeg) and the increasing
nearness of the destination, i.e. Cherkis, the children’s
father. Each character the Troutmans meet is
as unconventional and marginal as they are themselves—except
the authority figures such as the high
school principal or the doctor and nurses at Min’s
hospital ward. Caricatured as ridiculous, stupid,

and possibly mean, they can’t be trusted, a default
attitude position for teens “jacked up on rebellion.”
In reality, Hattie’s sharing of a joint with her teenage
nephew is a serious dereliction of duty; in a sitcom
world, all such indiscretions are funny, of a piece
with the mechanic named Freak and a latter-day
hippie named Adam who advises Hattie, after some
brief necking, to live in a “love direction.”
For some readers, particularly those comfortable
with the multitude of cultural references (mostly
aimed at twenty- and thirty-somethings) and a
heavy reliance on script-like dialogue (some of it
almost Beckett-like in its pointlessness), the novel
will work as good comedy, a wide-ranging road
trip farce. But this novel is not sustained farce. The
conversations in the enforced intimacy of the van
and seedy motel rooms include painful revelations
and agonizing helplessness in the face of a hopeless
situation. As Hattie’s lies come undone—and indeed
Logan was never deceived about her motives for
looking for Cherkis—the farce dissolves in Logan’s
despairing tears.
In one way, this blurring of tone and genre is
Toews’ strength, as it was in her Giller Prize-winning
A Complicated Kindness, which likewise focused on
mental illness in the family. Turning despair into
dark comedy makes the pain bearable, and otherwise
marginal people are made warmly human and
loveable. The teen predilection for melodrama and
uncertain selfhood is accurately portrayed in Thebes
and Logan, as well as in Hattie, the adult adolescent.
On the other hand, the indeterminate tone is also
the novel’s weakness. A sitcom world can tolerate
one outrageous coincidence after another—how
nice that Hattie’s boyfriend dumps her just in time
to set her free to rescue her sister’s family, or that
Cherkis is so wonderfully trackable from South
Dakota to the Mexican border—but the reality of
the dysfunctional family is only mocked by such
coincidences, and the ending of the novel remains
unconvincing. Somehow the novel’s recurring motif
of escape (at least two people that the Troutmans
meet are about to abandon their jobs, for very dubious
reasons and in pursuit of even more dubious
goals) turns in on itself, until the novel itself seems
an attempt at escape. That may not be undesirable,
of course, but readers should be prepared.
Like A Complicated Kindness, The Flying Troutmans
will either charm completely or disappoint
and annoy. Like Min herself, a character who is never
developed enough to explain everyone’s devotion
to her (even Cherkis didn’t really abandon her but
was driven away), the novel travels “in two opposite
directions at once.” Fortunately, both directions—
the farcical and the tragic—seem headed in a “love
direction.”
the ordinary, the numinous
Neufeldt, Leonard. The Coat is Thin. Cascadia Publishing
House, 2008.
Reviewed by Melanie Siebert
Our coats too thin; we sing and the wind
stronger now seeks our skin,
and through the skin our bones.
(from “Passing”)
In his newest collection of
poetry, The Coat is Thin,
Leonard Neufeldt “hears
in his bones, descendant
bones.” These poems are
rooted in the extended
history of the writer’s
Dutch-Russian Mennonite
heritage, but also in the
writer’s personal migrations,
between this place
and that, between investigation
and contemplation,
between faith and a fecund uncertainty.
Neufeldt was born and raised in Yarrow, B.C. His
grandparents and his own father had fled the perils
of Stalinism to establish a life of peace and religious
freedom in Canada. Some of the poems in this collection
retrieve the stories of the old country, such
as the prose poem that recounts an uncle praying
before he is shot by Bolshevik recruiters. Some of
the poems, such as “Yarrow was Once a Mennonite
Town” and “A Mennonite Short Story Writer on the
Second Anniversary of His Death,” probe a more
recent and muddied take on cultural identity.
One strength here is that the writing doesn’t fall
prey to the clichéd Mennonite history. There is no
quaint and simple past. Neufeldt is interested in the
particularities of time and place—but the specificity
of here is always impinged upon by both his
own narrative lineage and the other narratives he
encounters in his far-and-wide travels. His poetry
Winter 2008 43

ecognizes that the world is “large enough” for us “to
lose everything we know and say by heart.”
In his essay “Notes on the Author: Where are
We? Who are We?” (Mennonite Life, vol. 59 no.2)
Neufeldt says, “There is a world of difference between
being rooted and root-bound. The rootedness
I esteem is strong yet tenuous; it does not
hold us back from growth and change. Indeed, it
welcomes negotiations with a world well beyond the
local and particular.”
This negotiation is what makes this book compelling.
The poet here is witness to the past and
present, to the ordinary and the numinous. The
coat truly is thin. Our identity, personal and cultural,
is never enough to protect us against the elements.
We remain permeable; we are changed.
“Mojo Magic and Short Wave” is an example of
a poem that enacts a complicated negotiation. The
speaker in the poem sits in his car outside a football
stadium in Odessa, Texas. Waiting for his daughters
who are at the game, he pans the wide world
of shortwave radio stations. Weaving together the
smell of Texan refineries, the stadium antics, the
cold war realities and a neighbor who is dying, the
author examines power dynamics and the intersections
of the personal and the political.
This is an ambitious and sweeping poem that
comes to a poignant close. However, this poem
also exemplifies some of the book’s weaknesses.
At times, the poems lack narrative clarity. Using
secondary information to delay primary information
can be used as a device to create tension and
vary the pacing of the poem, but diversions that are
lengthy or tonally inconsistent risk throwing the
reader out of the poem. In “Mojo Magic and Short
Wave” some basic questions about the narrative
premise lead to reader confusion. While the poems
throughout the book are thematically strong, technical
missteps—confusing line breaks, pronouns
without clear antecedents, meaning obscured by
missing articles or other parts of speech—conspire
to keep the reader out of the work. This could have
been easily fixed with a careful edit.
The strongest section in the book is the first
one, titled “West of Time is Place.” Many of these
poems achieve a lyric intensity as they log the poet’s
location in time and place. Never indulgent or excessive,
the emotions are finely modulated through
image. Here the poet is not relaying answers, but is
seeking them.
In “Stars West of Williams Lake,” the speaker’s in-
44 Rhubarb
timate knowledge of the immense night sky perfectly
match his unknowing as the steep, dark mountain
“refers to itself” and the “prints and the night [keep]
on going.” Images like “skeins fine as gulls’ spittle”
are as startling as wolf howl. They avoid simple
conclusions or categorizations by letting the lyric
moment simply exist. Here the poet lives up to the
epigraph by William Stafford, locating himself “by
the real things [he] live[s] by.”
The Coat is Thin is marked by a restlessness in
mind, body and spirit—and perhaps more importantly,
a commitment to permeability. As this book
ranges around the block and across the world, it
weaves together friends and neighbours, family
and community, geographies and galaxies, cultural
loss and acquisition. Never wallowing in nostalgia,
Neufeldt roves the past, and hauls back the weight
of memory.
He seems to have taken to heart Thoreau’s adage:
“Know your own bone: gnaw at it, bury it, unearth
it, and gnaw at it still.”
As real people do
Braun, Lois. The Penance Drummer and Other Stories.
Turnstone Press, 2007.
Reviewed by Dora Dueck
“I still do not know,” mused
Mavis Gallant in her preface to
The Collected Stories of Mavis
Gallant (Random House, 1996)
“what impels anyone sound
of mind to leave dry land and
spend a lifetime describing
people who do not exist. If it
is child’s play, an extension of
make-believe … how to account
for the overriding wish to do that…?”
And what impels readers, one story after the
next, into watching the lives of people created and
described for them—watching to see how they’ll
behave with what comes their way? Isn’t it the
same child-like compulsion, love of “pretend,” and
need? So mused I, reading with pleasure the various
people Lois Braun brings to life in her fourth collection,
The Penance Drummer and Other Stories.
Braun has made the short story her play and
work, and character her particular focus.

Quite a number of the characters in this collection
are recently bereaved, others long for different
lives or struggle over situations beyond their
control. Some respond with small determinations
of their own, as in “Broken Angels,” where Della,
who lied to her mother, removes and then returns
the broken pieces of a “sightless” yet accusing stone
angel on a monument beside her mother’s grave.
Toots, in “Laundry Day,” washes and hangs her
late husband’s twenty pairs of socks on the line as
a gesture of new beginnings, yet the “row of black
commas bob[bing] in the afternoon breeze” underlines
a poignant afternoon adventure with a younger
friend, Doreen, that brings Toots other challenges as
well as the knowledge that she’ll “survive and laugh
and move on” in her life.
Sometimes it’s other people, life’s vagaries, or
even a “miracle” such as the strangers Dana and
Johnny experience when they survive a vehicle
accident (in “A Private Paradise”) that make the
characters behave, as it were, and the story happen.
Recently widowed Bill (in “Bill’s Girls”), for example,
out for a drive in his red Plymouth convertible,
is startled by apples hitting the car hood. This leads
him to the Sawatzky farm, where we feel with him
his vague sense of trespass, his loneliness, and his
fantasies, then gratitude too, for the practical Mrs.
Sawatzky and the realities of children and farm that
seem to ground her—and ultimately, Bill. He sees
“a giant, mystic ruby” in a jar of apple jelly and a
coach pulled by unicorns in a convertible. The spell
is broken by what he finds on his car at the end of
the visit.
Garry Enns Associates
Community and Organizational Development
Project Planning and Management
Research and Writing
You are invited to help him support writers, artists and performers
by contributing generously to the MLS and Rhubarb. If
you want to find out more about the Mennonite Literary Society
and Rhubarb, contact Garry by calling him at (204) 882-2481 or
emailing him at .
Garry Enns Associates brings this Stewardship issue of
Rhubarb to the 2008 NAAEE Conference—EE on the
Prairie: Pioneering new Strategies
As in previous work, Braun often uses her own
southern Manitoba landscape and ethos as setting.
These shape the characters, and yield up the gentle
or amusing ironies that dance through her work.
“The Half-Town Folly” unfolds the worries and
dreams of freedom of Willis as he waits in the getaway
car for his brother and buddy to rob the small
credit union of Half-Town. Thinking this “itty-bitty
little village” in “the middle of nowhere” will be
easy pickings, the thieves encounter a line of seniors
cashing their pension cheques and snowmobilers
gathering at the store across the street. Willis, waiting
anxiously on the road, finds himself approached
in turn by three local folks, who don’t pass by but
are all would-be Good Samaritans, seeking to help.
Braun gets the details of the winter landscape, small
town, and the hapless Willis—who doesn’t want
so very much, just a “lesser girl” and a Boler—just
right; it’s a story whose parts as well as cumulative
effect linger in the mind.
Braun’s voice has a quiet, commonplace feel
on the surface, but there’s a great deal of precision
within it. Occasionally, as in “Assassins,” characters
may veer a little too close to stereotype to feel
entirely credible, and occasionally too, even in a layered
and detail-rich piece like “Goldie,” important
bits seem missing—not details that would resolve
or explain the story necessarily, but those rather to
sharpen our sense of the characters themselves.
Mostly though, Braun’s work holds up strongly to
scrutiny and curiosity. Like children we troop after
her creations because they compel us. They baffle
and interest and affect us, exactly as “real” people do.
Roy, Johnston & Co.
Barristers and Solicitors
Jacob P. Janzen
b.a., m.a., ll.b.
363 – 10 th Street
Brandon, Manitoba
R7A 4E9
Phone: (204) 727-0761
Fax: (204) 726-1339
Winter 2008 45

Christopher Barnes won a Northern Arts writers
award. In July 2001 he read at Waterstones bookshop
to promote the anthology Titles Are Bitches. Christmas
2001 he debuted at Newcastle’s famous Morden Tower,
reading his poems. Each year he reads for Proudwords
lesbian and gay writing festival and partakes in
workshops. 2005 saw the publication of his collection
LOVEBITES, published by Chanticleer Press, 6/1 Jamaica
Mews, Edinburgh.
J. L. Bond resides on the prairies where she writes
poetry and paints in watercolour. She has published
in literary journals, church periodicals, and local
newspapers. She was selected as an apprentice in the
Sheldon Oberman Emerging Writers Mentor Program
in 2008.
Federico Buchbinder, a photo enthusiast who lives
in Winnipeg, grabs his camera and goes out on short
road trips to capture unstaged moments. His main
focus are everyday, mundane objects; he tries to look
at them from different angles, breathing them into a
life of their own.
Ray Dirks is a Winnipeg artist and curator who
has worked in 30 countries. Solo exhibitions of his
internationally themed watercolours have taken place
in Canada, the US (including at Yale University where
he was a research fellow in 2002), Cuba, and Ethiopia.
In January 2009 he has a show in Jaipur, India. Dirks
has been curator at the Mennonite Heritage Centre
Gallery since 1998.
Dora Dueck is the author of two books, and many
articles, stories, poems, essay and reviews. She currently
lives in Winnipeg. Besides writing, Dueck also works as
an editor, and is currently the associate editor of the MB
Herald, a Mennonite magazine. She writes historical
and general fiction, as well as non-fiction.
K. Enns participated in the inaugural School of
Writing workshops at Canadian Mennonite University
in 2007. She has three children, the last one born in
March 2008. She lives in Ladner, BC, and is in the first
year of the Masters of Fine Arts program at Pacific
Lutheran University.
Bill (Willard) Fast was born in 1922 in Mountain
Lake, Minnesota. After graduation from Mountain
Lake High School he briefly attended Mankato State
Teachers College before enlisting in the US Navy in
1942. He served in the Pacific Fleet as a Pharmacist
Mate and was discharged in 1946. He received his BM
and MM degrees (Music Theory and Composition)
46 Rhubarb
Contributors
from James Millikin University in 1949 and 1951.
Between 1949 and 1961 he worked as High School
Choral Director in several Michigan cities, and from
1962 until his retirement in 1982 he was Choral Director
and Instructor of Music Theory at Charles Steward
Mott Community College in Flint, Michigan.
John W. Goossen lives in Ladner, BC with his wife
and four of his five daughters. He spends some of his
time writing short stories and poetry and has had
pieces published in Rhubarb, Geez, and the Vancouver
Downtown Memory Project.
Jeff Gundy teaches at Bluffton University and spent
spring 2008 as a Fulbright lecturer at the University of
Salzburg. His most recent books are Spoken Among the
Trees (poems) and Walker in the Fog: On Mennonite
Writing.
Hedy Heppenstall lives in Winnipeg and works as a
nurse and a writer. Her work has been published in A/
Cross Sections: New Manitoba Writing and The Prairie
Journal of Canadian Literature. She has been inspired
and mentored by several local writers of Mennonite
ancestry and recently attended the Canadian Mennonite
School of Writing. Her full name is Hedwig,
and since notice of publication in this journal, a few
of her friends have been calling her Hed-Wiebe. She
takes this as a compliment.
Jean Janzen lives in Fresno, California, where she
has taught at Fresno Pacific University. Her most recent
collection of poems is Paper House, Good Books,
2008. Born in Saskatchewan, she was moved at age
five to Minnesota and other points in the midwestern
United States. Most of her married life has been in
California where she raised four children with her
doctor husband, and eventually found language for
the wonder and mysteries of being human.
Paul Krahn lives in Neubergthal, MB. He teaches
High School English, blows the mouth organ, and
writes when he finds the time.
M. Travis Lane lives in Fredericton, N.B. and has
won numerous honours and prizes for her poetry,
among them the Pat Lowther, the Alden Nowlan, and
the Bliss Carman. Her most recent publications are
Touch Earth, 2006; The Crisp Day Closing on my Hand,
2007; and, forthcoming, The All-Nighter’s Radio.
Marcia Lee Laycock lives in central Alberta with
her husband, two golden retrievers, and a six-toed cat.
Her work has appeared in newspapers and magazines
across Canada and the U.S., and been broadcast on

CBC radio. Her novel, One Smooth Stone won her the
Best New Canadian Christian Author Award from
Castle Quay Books in 2006.
Susan Plett writes from the home in Calgary that
she shares with a small dog, two medium-sized children
and an adult-sized husband. Her clearest writing
mandate, at this particular moment, is to try to tell
the truth.
Brenda Sciberras was raised in rural Manitoba,
and now lives and writes in Winnipeg. She earned her
Bachelor of Arts from the University of Manitoba and
is an alumni of the Sage Hill Writing Experience in Saskatchewan.
Her poetry has appeared in The Collective
Consciousness, Room of One’s Own, Contemporary Verse
2 and in the anthology A/Cross Sections: New Manitoba
Writing. Although not technically a Mennonite she is
married to one and has eaten rollkuchen while sitting
on a schlopebank.
Valerie Stelck lives and writes in the Interlake. Two
of her stories have been published in anthologies. She
Continued from page 48
dent, these truths.
What maybe seemed so de’dwäa was
that that self-evident all was a lot bigger
than some and that all went deeper than
skin, and that it was one thing to be equal
with people who sported a variety of skin
pigmentations as long as they pursued
happiness in the same way we did and allowed
their scarlet sins to be washed as
white as snow; but it was quite another
when it started to sink in that if all were
to pursue and obtain the same amount of
happiness as we were used to having, then
it could well be that there might just not
be enough tar in the sandbox to provide
happiness for all.
So the comfortable thing seemed to be
to slip back into the cosmologies of the
Monopoly game and the sand-covered
oil fields of the world’s meddel-linje there
between the Mediterranean Sea, the Nile
River, and the Red Sea to let us off the
hook. After all, the whole Monopoly game
is currently revising her first novel.
Jarrett Storey is a catfishing troglodyte from North
End Winnipeg. He writes poetry for dixie-whistlers,
winos, criminals and cowgirls.
Shannah-Lee Vidal is a recent graduate of Red River
College’s Creative Communications program. She also
holds a BA in English from the University of Winnipeg.
Shannah-Lee is excited for her work to be published
in Rhubarb. She lives in Winnipeg.
Rudy Wiebe is one of Canada’s most cherished and
acclaimed writers. He is widely published internationally
and is the winner of numerous awards, including
two Governor General’s Literary Awards for the
novels The Temptations of Big Bear and A Discovery of
Strangers. His most recent books are Of This Earth: A
Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest, the biography
“Big Bear” in The Extraordinary Canadians series, and
a Landmark Edition of Playing Dead: A Contemplation
Concerning the Arctic. Rudy Wiebe is an Officer of the
Order of Canada and lives in Edmonton.
was based on exploiting inequalities—the
poor would always be with us, we could
make sure of that.
But there was something about äwaschrots
that wouldn’t leave us alone, and
we wondered if maybe flying over the
Middle East like the raven flies might help
us see that the Holy Land so imbedded in
our souls and psyches has no oil.
So was it then, not as always, only still
the same, but we came past the fourth day
of the eleventh month 232 years after the
self-evident truth, even though the rhubarb
was red on the outside, at least the
stalks, and the leaves were still green, and
poisonous too. Knowing this may feel a
little bit linjsh and a little bit rajcht, even
de’dwäa—but I think it feels mostly äwaschrots.
R
Armin Wiebe is not Mrs. Corny Cornie Reimer
and writes from the middle, not the
edge.
Rhubarb 47

Linjsch, Rajcht,
De’dwäa, and Äwaschrots
By Armin Wiebe
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness.
—The Declaration of Independence, 1776
So was it then, not as always, no it
was different, only still the same too.
The rhubarb was red on the outside, at
least the stalks, but the leaves were still
green, and poisonous too. Giftig, if you
want still German to use. Jeftijch, if you
use Plautdietsch, which is interesting because
it brings giving and poison together,
sugar-coated poison pills good for fending
off corporate takeovers or orphaned
widowers. More blessed to give than to receive.
The French would give you poisson,
a whole other kettle of fish, with or without
legs. But the rhubarb was red, still,
with green leaves, growing at the edge of
the garden almost in the row of willows
there that grew between the neighbour’s
field and the yard. So it was then, but not
as always.
Some thought things had gone too linjsch,
too left-wing; others thought things
were far too rajcht, so much weight on the
right wing that even angels couldn’t fly;
and there were those who thought it was
all äwaschrots, and for sure you can’t run
a business as the raven flies—raven stories
have no scientific validity. A few even said
things were just de’dwäa, like a Model A
slipping out of control on a muddy meddel-linje,
the field road dividing a section
of land down the middle into equal parts.
Of course the southpaw linjsche
tongues said that the self-righteous rajchte
had been cultivating away at that middle
road so that the centre, the middle-line,
had been moved over so far that even a
person who buckled up his seatbelt and
used his turn signal lights before making
a turn was now considered to be a Marxist
or at least a socialist fellow traveler.
And as at least one publi-
Linjsch
can and sinner said, “This is no
Rajcht
time to be expeerimenting with
socialism—or Social Credit for
that matter.”
For sure, the rackering rajchte
railed that the linjsche were just
Äwaschrots
tax and spend liberals who were
too dupsijch to run a business
without subsidy from the taxpayer,
and for sure the rajchte
>
were the only true critiques of
De’dwäa
poor reason and so would use
taxpayers’ money to schtiepa
up the rotting scaffolding of the
hallowed worldwide Monopoly game.
Meanwhile the kitty-cornered äwaschrotse
thought that both the linjsche
and the rajchte were leading the world
down the slippery slope of poor reason,
and that really the Monopoly game was
no longer viable—not even Viagra would
bring back Henry Ford—and that even
Adam Smith wouldn’t approve of using
one credit card to make payments on another
credit card.
And those who said that things were
just de’dwäa, if they saw anything at all
to make them change their minds, would
only give in that things for sure were like
a stomach after a day of rackering on
the steppe with nothing to eat—hanging
downright scheef.
So it was then, not as always, only still
the same too, because it had been this way
for 232 years at least, self-evident some
said, and some even said that it was only
now after 232 years that it was self-evi-
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