Whetstone Magazine

A semi-annual Canadian publication of the literary arts.

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Behold: Advertising. • • For those of you who might not know, Whetstone is always accepting submissions. Each submission undergoes a three step blind-review process before going to print. If you’re a photographer, graphic artists, poet, prose, novel, short story, or really any type of ‘creative’ writer, send your stuff to [email protected]. • • • #yql #uleth #uofl #universityoflethbridge #independentprint #independentpublishing #creativewriting #whetstone

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Featured Photographer: Robyn Chell

See more of her photos in the latest issue of Whetstone Magazine (Issue 5)

Please support local talent and check out her work!

http://www.robynchell.com

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Whetstone Issue 5 Launch // CWA Reading (Set 2)

Thank you to everyone who made it out to our event!

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Whetstone Issue 5 Launch // CWA Reading (Set 1)

Thank you to all who made it out to our event!

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Featured Excerpt: Bad Moon Rising

Perhaps his problem was that he never really wanted anything, and it annoyed almost everyone that he knew it did not bother him as much as it bothered them.

“You have no drive”, his father said.

“No ambition”, his mother said.

No get-up-and-go.

He tuned them all out, and at nineteen in the fall when his friends were all going away to school, he simply moved out of his parents’ house to an apartment just four stops from the Loop. Only a day after he had moved in , his mother rode the Red Line all the way down from Evanston carrying a lemon layer-cake on her lap for him. Of course he could not eat it all and a week later would wind up putting it out with garbage.

“You don’t wear your St. Christopher’s anymore?” he noticed, the dime-sized medallion dangling on the back of his chair like a loose button from shirt.

“Sometimes”, he lied. He did not want her to think that he moved away from her completely. But he had in fact moved on.

At twenty-two, he took a job working in the kitchen of La Luz, a popular “Mexican-style” restaurant in Pilsen where the el rides to and from the restaurant and the Spanish conversations of co-workers washing dishes, sweeping floors, and carrying trash bags out to the dumpsters provided in an ideal buffer zone between work and a non-existent social life.

Every other Monday he would ride the el back up to Evanston for an obligatory home-cooked “Sunday” meal, La Luz going “dark” on Monday nights.

On the return trips, the trains were often only four cars long after nine o’clock, and he often had an entire car all to himself. Yet even in an almost empty car, he sometimes used the rook-to-castle maneuver his father taught him (especially when the train was approaching Wrigley), sliding over to the aisle seat, turning his White Sox cap around, and facing the window so that he took up two seats instead of one.

“Addison, the next stop. Addison. Priority seating is intended for the elderly and those with disabilities. Your cooperation is requested.”

When he awoke it was close to four. Enough time to shower, brush his teeth, and check The Weather Channel. In almost four years since he had moved into his apartment, very little changed. He had bought a fast screen TV. What little other furniture there was had come from his parents. What few clothes he had (a pair of Jack Purcells; a quilted flight jacket from an Army-Navy store, KOREA stitched across the front, a Chinese dragon embossed upon the back; and a faded White Sox baseball cap with a lovingly hand-cupped bill) were of little concern to him, covered as he would be neck-to-knee six days a week by a butcher’s apron for his entire 8-hour shift at the restaurant.

The other kitchen workers often went shirtless underneath their aprons, showing off elaborate ‘Dia de los Muertos' tattoos which he initially thought were to impress the choices working in the front, but came to realize were probably just reminders of being somewhere other than where they were.

The girls from the front of the restaurant who elicited “oohs” from the diners by making flamboyant veronicas with the tablecloths before seating their parties did not talk to the mestizos—only two cooks, who served as a kind of Rio Grande—on one side, the United States, on the other Mexico.

For him, however, it was just the opposite. Working at La Luz was like swimming across the border—only in the wrong direction.

Sitting on a soda can in the alley behind the kitchen, he diners on a plate of mashed potatoes and beans, sipping a Jarritos and listening to the thrum of Spanish guitars wafting out into the night from a radio on the windowsill of an apartment building just across the way. Music—especially Mexican music—coming through a open windows always magical. An American in Mexico without having to travel any further than the el.

On the way back to his apartment, he sat n another almost empty car staring at the ads above the windows. It was their juxtapositioning that leaped out at him: a career training program “working with professionals”. A bronzed couple embracing under an island palm tree against a shimmering ocean backdrop.

A leprechaun beside an Illinois Instant Lotto jackpot pot. An ad for HIV testing. A pitch “Your Eyewitness News team bringing you the world at 6 and 10”, An ad for collecting on personal injury claims.

The train slowed.

“The next stop is Belmont. Belmont. Transfer to the Brown and Purple Lines. The next stop is Belmont. Doors open on the right.”

Creedence Clearwater came to mind. There is a bathroom on the right. Yet even after he was made aware of his error, he stuck with his vision; it made him smile. There is a bathroom on the right. He smiled.

“Doors closing. Doors closing. Next stop will be Belmont. Belmont.”

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To continue reading this story, pick up a copy of Whetstone at the University of Lethbridge campus or any of our local Lethbridge vendors.

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It's a new year, that means new submissions! We're closing submissions for Issue 5 and heading straight into the new year with Issue 6! As always, send in your submissions to [email protected] or whetstonemagazine.tumblr.com/submit!

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