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CHRISTINE NEGUS


The Rusty Toque | Poetry | Issue 2 | February 27, 2012

THINGS YOU CAN MAKE MAPS OUT OF ...

Houses like family
Returned from the dead
The stillness was stifling

I could describe the neighborhood in darkness
But walking the street
The sky greying above
I no longer knew
Who lay behind the facades

The adjacent home
Had the same stone sculptures
Cold like epitaphs
Marbling their front lawn

It was still yellow
Though dulled over the years

Looking through the window
My breath like apparitions on the glass
Hazed glimpses inside

The TV was no longer in the corner
The blue walls now a satiny red
Enveloping the living room

I had once dropped a gerbil
Brought to show the woman next door
On the front lawn

At the time
The grass seemed to reach out beyond its boundaries
As I looked for the animal

Now it seemed minute

In the kitchen it was warm
The kettle was whistling
Steam through the florescent light
As the gerbil fought its return
Back into its plastic home

UNTITLED


​It was 1998 and me and my dad were watching the Winter Olympics.  Figure skating was on and there was a girl doing her routine.  It seemed effortless and aimless as she followed the edge of the rink, even though I knew she was going really fast.  She was wearing a pink outfit with sparkles and strips of chiffon that fell down around her hips and under her arms.  I thought the strips looked like severed limbs but not yet detached.  Just flapping, hitting her body, reminding her they were still there, that they used to be a part of her even if she couldn’t feel them.  I was 6 and sitting in my living room watching figure skating thinking that would be so terrible.  That’s what I thought it would feel like if I were in a major disaster or if there was an apocalypse.  I would be the last one left with a bunch of dead things hanging around.  I started crying.  My dad noticed and I walked over to him and he hugged me and then I started crying louder and my mom came over and she started hugging me.  I knelt on the ground and they were both hugging me and I was holding tightly onto their necks, crying.  I can remember the couch’s red brocade, the blue and yellow striped shirt my father was wearing, and the figure skater that was spinning and spinning and spinning, the flaps just hitting her in what seemed like slow motion, forever. 
_
Picture

CHRISTINE NEGUS is a multidisciplinary artist and writer who received her MFA in 2010 from Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois and her BFA from the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario in 2008. She has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally, with notable exhibitions and screenings including the Montreal Underground Film Festival, Cambridge Galleries, Art Gallery of York University, Xpace Cultural Centre and Images Festival where, in 2008, she won the National Film Board of Canada's Best Emerging Video/Filmmaker. Her first solo exhibition, you can't spell slaughter without laughter, opened in January 2012 at Gallery TPW. Negus' short “the loneliest animals” is included in the anthology Blast Counterblast edited by Anthony Elms and Steve Reinke.
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  • Home
    • Issue 1 >
      • Creative Nonfiction: 1
      • Fiction: 1
      • Screenwriting: 1
      • Poetry: 1
      • Contributors: 1
    • Issue 2 >
      • Visual Art: 2
      • Fiction: 2
      • Poetry: 2
      • Masthead: 2
      • Contributors: 2
    • Issue 3 >
      • Poetry: 3
      • Visual Art: 3
      • Comics: 3
      • Fiction: 3
      • Reviews: 3
      • Masthead: 3
      • Contributors: 3
    • Issue 4 >
      • Prose: 4
      • Poetry: 4
      • Reviews: 4
      • Visual Art: 4
      • Contributors: 4
      • Masthead: 4
    • Issue 5 >
      • Nonfiction Kathy Acker & McKenzie Wark
      • Drama: 5
      • Prose: 5
      • Poetry: 5
      • Film: 5
      • Comics: 5
      • Reviews: 5
      • Visual Art: 5
      • Video & Sound: 5
      • Masthead: 5
      • Contributors: 5
    • Issue 6 >
      • Poetry: 6
      • Prose: 6
      • Reviews: 6
      • Film: 6
      • Visual Art: 6
      • Masthead: 6
      • Contributors: 6
    • Issue 7 >
      • Film: 7
      • Prose: 7
      • Poetry: 7
      • Reviews: 7
      • Visual Art: 7
      • Comics: 7
      • Masthead: 7
      • Contributors: 7
    • Issue 8 >
      • Poetry: 8
      • Prose: 8
      • Visual Art: 8
      • Comics: 8
      • Reviews: 8
      • Contributors: 8
      • Masthead: 8
    • Issue 9 >
      • Poetry: 9
      • Prose: 9
      • Comics: 9
      • Visual Art: 9
      • Reviews: 9
      • Contributors: 9
      • Masthead: 9
    • Issue 10 >
      • Poetry: 10
      • Fiction: 10
      • Reviews: 10
      • Visual Art: 10
      • Film: 10
      • Comics: 10
      • Contributors: 10
      • Masthead: 10
    • Issue 11 >
      • Poetry: 11
      • Prose: 11
      • Reviews: 11
      • Visual Art: 11
      • Comics: 11
      • Contributors: 11
      • Masthead: 11
    • Issue 12 >
      • Poetry: 12
      • Prose: 12
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      • Visual Art: 12
      • Contributors: 12
      • Masthead: 12
    • Issue 13 >
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