Joyland

a hub for short fiction

Montreal Atlantic

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Joyland Retro 2 is now in print, with work from Peter Orner, Kate Durbin, Daniel Mueller and more. Every copy sold will help support Joyland and its authors.
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Montreal Atlantic

St. Urbain’s Horse’s Ass

Drew Nelles
Editor: 
David McGimpsey

Almost every evening, beginning in late April or early May, Isaac sat on the exposed staircase of his apartment and watched the corner of St. Urbain and Bernard gasp to life. The condos around the corner were inhabited by people Isaac might have called yuppies if he didn’t feel so close to becoming a young urban professional himself; they bought organic food at the nearby fruiteries and brought it home in canvas tote bags, talking whip-fast French into their smartphones. There were also people Isaac recognized from school or parties, who passed him by with a wave and walked on in their well-fitted clothes. 

“So wistful!” a voice said. “What a vision.”

Isaac looked down the staircase and there was Bronwen, smiling, flashing the gap between her front teeth. Her boyfriend Martin climbed the steps behind her, hoisting a massive, overstuffed armchair.

“Martin,” Isaac said, “what the hell is that?”

Montreal Atlantic

The Clinical Trials of Eduardo Cabalas

Molly Lynch
Editor: 
David McGimpsey

I got a job as a purple dinosaur that kids could get their picture taken with, on the corner of St. Catherine’s and Peel in Montreal.

“Why the hell are you doing that?” my brother Otis asked when I announced that I was now fully employed.

“Why?” I replied. “Why?”

Otis spent his days in a hydraulic swivel chair, masking himself from halitosis and TB while excavating pinholes of rot out other peoples’ teeth. He’d hold out a gloved hand and Yasmina would place a glowing orange biolaser there. “Thank you Yasmina,” he’d say in a voice low and muffled.

I made a commission off every photo a child had taken on my purple lap. Kids called me “Barney” and screamed with joy and hugged me with honest and startling love, hugged me like I could save them.

Montreal Atlantic

Cold

Arjun Basu
Editor: 
David McGimpsey

 

The house was cold. A malevolent kind of cold. Like something haunted. The cold blew in and out of Ravi. It was like the tip of a frozen finger had reached down from the voids of space and was pushing down on him without release. This is the level of cold he felt inside his house. The cold created pressure. Like a front, as weathermen say. A constriction of things.

 

He’d chop wood during the day to keep warm and to try and build a fire big enough to heat the house. But the cold would not cease. His body absorbed it and made it its own. He’d look toward the fire and instead of feeling warmth the house laughed at him.

Montreal Atlantic

The Report Cards of Leslie Mackie

Jon Paul Fiorentino
Editor: 
David McGimpsey

Jon Paul Fiorentino's first novel is Stripmalling, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Hugh MacLennan Award for Fiction. His most recent book of poetry is Indexical Elegies which recently won the 2010 CBC Book Club Award for Best Book of Poetry.  He is the author of the poetry books The Theory of the Loser Class which was shortlisted for the 2006 A.M. Klein Award for Poetry and Hello Serotonin and the humor book Asthmatica. His next book of poetry is Needs Improvement, which will be out in 2013 with Coach House Books. He lives in Montreal where he teaches creative writing at Concordia University, and edits Matrix magazine.

"The Report Cards of Leslie Mackie" is written in the form of report cards. Please read more to view them.

 

Montreal Atlantic

GORILLA PAINTING 26" x 32" ACRYLIC ON CANVAS

Kris Bertin
Editor: 
David McGimpsey

Present arrives from brother for 29th birthday.

Painting of Gorilla with hands raised, palms-up, sitting in marshy field. Dead and disemboweled Gorillas peppered around swampy landscape, half-sunken into mud like the beaches of Normandy.

Note attached: When are you gonna quit MONKEYING AROUND and GROW UP? Saw this and thought of you—perfect fit for the house. Francis.

See message as commentary on inability to settle down and find high-paying work or meaningful relationship. Carefully crafted jab about failed engagement with ex girlfriend, four exes ago. Note mention of the house, not your house, as if house purchased cheaply from parents doesn’t count.

Painting is monstrous, not even funny in campy way. All gorillas dead or in pain, main gorilla overcome with emotion: horror or pain or madness.

Montreal Atlantic

The Border

Arjun Basu
Editor: 
David McGimpsey

And then she pulled off the highway and rolled into the town there and stopped in front of a bar and said “Get out” and I said “For real?” and she said “Get out” and I got out and she popped the trunk and I retrieved my bag and closed the trunk and without looking back at me she gunned the car and drove away.

This was how it was going to end, in a kind of preordained melodrama, with an egregious stupidity that would manifest itself like this. We had just crossed over from Quebec. The gust of wind kicking up the parking lot dirt was probably Canadian. And now I was here, the first town in New Hampshire, and I was in front of a bar and that triggered a thirst.

Montreal Atlantic

My Last Summer in Washington

Sarah Steinberg
Editor: 
David McGimpsey

At first, I said moving to DC was like stepping inside a candy wrapper. That seemed right at the time but, then - not. A candy wrapper isn't necessarily humid or sticky inside. DC's summer was the wrapper with the chocolate melted in your pocket, all over your keys and your loose change. When I found out Washington had actually been built on a swamp, I imagined dark woods with simmering ponds, toads on toilet paper lily pads.

Montreal Atlantic

I’m Sorry and Thank You

Andrew Hood
Editor: 
David McGimpsey

He came out onto his porch and there was some hippy mother changing her baby on his lawn. On a Hudson's Bay blanket, the mother was wiping and dabbing at the muddy rolls and creases of her little girl. A gust of wind whipped up leaves around the two, and it was like last night on TV. Some pear-shaped Spanish grandma had been crammed into this glass booth with money being blown all around her. The grandma grabbed at the bills, stuffed her clothes with money and wore twisted look of desperation on her face. She looked so stupid. He couldn’t tell if the point was to degrade the grandma, but he could tell that this particular grandma didn’t care. When the wind in the booth was turned off all the money dropped and lay in a pile at her feet. All that money just right there, but not for her. She had gotten some, but not enough. Never enough. The brittle and wet leaves stuck to the hippy mother’s dreadlocks and onto the swamp of the little girl.

Montreal Atlantic

Something Special

Sarah Gilbert
Editor: 
David McGimpsey

In the Gatineaus, where they’d rented a cottage, the days were an early summer medley of leaf green and lake green. It was the season’s first heat wave and Martha and Gray swam naked in the green lake. She floated on her back watching the bright sky. He dove off the dock and swam over, then dipped underneath her and bobbed up in bubbly swirls. They made sandwiches for each other, scooped big bowls of ice cream, cracked open beers from the fridge. They lounged on the deck with a view of the glinting lake through the trees.

 

 

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