You will have ridden for three days before the canyon narrows and you have to leave the horse. The rest of the way you’ll travel on foot. You’ll drop your gear—the grey curl of your bedroll and the blackened pot with the mismatched lid, even the punched-leather satchel they gave you in Arthurstown. But you’ll keep your gun, the five-pointed badge that you wear on your chest, and the bandolier the dark-haired señorita gave you.
The canyon’s red-banded rocks look smooth, but up close you’ll find they are like sandpaper. Your gun belt will twist and twist and twist and you’ll have to keep righting it with your raw hands. The badge might catch and skitter and you’ll probably lose a button from your shirt. That bandolier, with its big buckle, will certainly scrape a fingernail passage when you suck in your chest to pass. But those things, the badge and the gun and the bandolier, you’ll keep them just the same. Which is a curious thing, because that gun will not avail you, that bandolier is going to kill you, and the five-pointed star of purity is the reason that I came for you in the first place.
Trust me when I tell you, this is how it always is. I’m the Green Knight, and I have seen this time and time again. There’s something about the receding border of the west that makes folk wild. Makes all kind of folk who in another time and another place would be sane and quiet, a shop clerk who hardly dares to smile at a young and pretty widow, a craftsman working in his shop alone. But the west is big, and it makes men big. They go around claiming to be the fastest draw, the longest shot, the steadiest hand, and each one of those in turn gets killed by the next; the fastest draw has a slow day, the longest shot doesn’t notice the glint in the grass a half mile away. People look after that sort of thing themselves, no intervention needed. But when someone claims to be a just man and the people laud him as the perfect sheriff, then you enter my domain.
Every time I’ve offered a sheriff the chance to play a duelling game they’ve come out into the main street and shot me dead right then. Nobody minds an easy win when a township is huddled and afraid. But when I pick my body up and remind the sheriff to come to me, come get the same in a year, well then those men they rue their haste and the town laments, as if open murder was somehow less despicable than a miracle.
Every man jack of you who plays the game starts to feel the dread almost as soon as I’m gone. Even before someone can throw a shovel of ash over the blood on the floor, that dread comes stealing in. Some of them run, and some of them don’t. In the end, though, every one of those honest men eventually comes down over that green ridge. He’s glad to water his horse there at the ranch, glad to take a bed, drink the coffee, eat the bacon. Every one of them agrees to give any gift from the señorita back to her father, but aside from you no one’s ever grassed it up.
When most folks figure it out, they panic. Sometimes they’ll take a cheap shot, drawing quick when they see me waiting with my axe under the tree. Sometimes they crawl on bruised-up knees and beg. When I swing the axe they shy like mustangs, some raise up their dirty hands as if that could protect them. And so they lie all jumbled mouldy bones, on the floor of the Green Chapel; it’s how the place got its name.
You, though, you’re an altogether different sort. Of all the men who’ve met me here, you’re the first to play the game very nearly fair. You gave me all the kisses you had collected, in exact proportion, and returned to me every gift you won. Well, almost.
See, I know the bandolier that falls across the shoulder sinister, for my daughter made it. What good is it to you? When you agreed to play the game you shot me dead, so now I know your bullet is already spent, and my weapon in this year-long duel is an axe. I suppose she told you that the bandolier was lucky, that it could preserve your life.
I cannot fault a man for loving life, for once upon a time I did too. But a life too long is wearying, and sometimes a little envy passes with me through the chapel green. So when you come before me and I slice your neck, not deeply for your faults aren’t deep, but enough to scar your face, will you understand that the suture of a broken bone, the knit flesh of a scar, these imperfections are by far the tougher place?
I’ve played the game so long I began to doubt that it would ever end. It’s weary work, all this baiting of sheriffs, all this chopping off of heads. You’re the nearest thing I’ve seen to goodness, flawed and toughened as you are. I am old and my perfection makes me brittle, like an apple branch in winter, like stained glass above an altar stone. I can’t say that I’m tired of it all, I don’t think tired is in my nature. But I’ll tell you, boy, I’m not sad to see you coming sideways through the red-stone canyon, to see you picking your way over the uneven ground all mossy-green. I’m not sad to see you standing there, head down like the head of a man in prayer, but the hand on the grip of your gun taut as dried leather.
I pit your honour against my cunning, your will to live against my numbered days. So bare your neck to me and be ready at last to trade a blow for a blow, and call the Green Knight’s bluff.
TURING TESTS
Peter Chiykowski
The idea behind digital computers may be explained by saying that these machines are intended to carry out any operations which could be done by a human computer.
—Alan Turing
I.
Tell yourself that computers don’t know
love, indigestion, irony, Shakespeare, prejudice,
the soul in its proud motion.
These are the secret handshakes
we learn to protect the clubhouse.
Display them like bottle-caps,
like we are at war with
the injuns down the street.
II.
My spellchecker learned
I was Canadian
before my neighbour did.
III.
Carbon knows the periodic table is all
snakes and ladders. It could slide
down its column to silicon
any time it wanted
and become something
less obsessed with
distinction.
IV.
Dijkstra said that
asking if machines could think
was like asking if submarines could swim,
but it was his computer
that wrote down the idea.
V.
Today my word processor offered to help me
with a love letter I was writing—
a favour I have yet to reciprocate.
Did Turing ever wonder
why they’d want to be like us?
VI.
The soul is a stick
we rattle on the bars of these arguments,
anxious to know
what side of the cell
we’ve been living on.
THE FAIRY GODMOTHER
Kim Neville
Childhood Wishes
When the Fairy Godmother is small, she can only grant small wishes. She turns buttons into pennies and makes gummy bears appear in coat pockets. She recovers socks lost in dryers. She vanishes bunions and mild rashes and embarrassing body hair. As she grows so does her power. The pennies become pearls. The socks become kittens.
No matter how many times she tries, she can’t make her father well.
The other children at school love the Fairy Godmother, mostly because of the gummy bears but also because she can make their paper airplanes fly in formation. She has a purple wand with a star on the end of it and her classmates are always stealing it at the playground. They swirl it around, trying to conjure up chocolate rivers or giant robot dogs. The wand emits puffs of gold glitter but their wishes never come true.
The Fairy Godmother’s wings tend to get in the way on the monkey bars. She prefers the teeter-totter.
But It Doesn’t Work That Way
Sometimes the Fairy Godmother would like to fill her own pockets with gummy bears.
Firs
t Love
Ben pulls into the driveway in his Dad’s Lexus. Her mother stays upstairs in her bedroom and her father is in the hospital so the Fairy Godmother answers the door herself. The theatre is in a bad part of town but the movie is Spirited Away. Once, in math class, the Fairy Godmother told Ben it was her favourite scary movie.
She doesn’t have to remind Ben about her wings. He takes her straight to the back row in the balcony. The Fairy Godmother is worried Ben might try to hold her hand when the No-Face Monster comes on screen. Instead he throws a piece of popcorn at her head.
Later Ben drives her to a park next to the river and they walk along the bank. He shows her how to skip stones. She turns shards of bottle glass into fireflies that circle above them, glowing amber, green, and white. They sit side-by-side on top of a picnic table, feet swinging and shoulders touching. The Fairy Godmother wonders if Ben knows that this would be a good time to take her hand.
“I was wondering,” Ben says. He leans into her. Their pinkie fingers are an inch apart. His honey-liquorice smell is masked by expensive aftershave. “Do you think you could get me into Yale?”
First Failure
She and her mother sit on opposite sides of the hospital bed. Each of them holds a bony hand. They are the hands of a stranger. Her father has been saying goodbye for years. For a long time he has only had one wish. The Fairy Godmother carries the weight of it with her always; it feels as if with every breath he takes, she swallows another stone.
She isn’t aware of the moment when her father draws his last breath. She only realizes he is gone when she looks up and sees her mother staring at her with accusing eyes.
Wings, Part I
Late at night the Fairy Godmother flies as high as she can, through wet clouds to where the air stretches thin, to where her skin burns and her lungs ache and all the wanting of the city fades away.
Never Enough
The Fairy Godmother builds her mother a castle made of glass. It has a movie theatre, a gym with a steam room, and a ten-car garage. She replicates Oprah’s closet and fills it with Versace. The pool has a swim-up bar. She gives her mother new breasts, size five feet, and a vintage Harley in mint condition.
Her mother only calls when she wants something. She asks for a swan pond in an enormous golden cage. The Fairy Godmother says no.
On a rainy day the Harley slides out on a tight corner. Her mother’s legs are crushed under the wheels of a semi-truck packed with chickens for slaughter. She bleeds out before the ambulance arrives. The Fairy Godmother doesn’t go to the funeral.
First Princess
One day the Fairy Godmother is on a crowded train heading downtown. The girl sitting next to her is wearing a black skirt and coffee-stained sneakers. Her hair is piled up in a bun. She smells like bacon. In her lap is a creased stack of paper. A script. The girl is mouthing the words. An elderly man gets on the train and she is the only one who offers him a seat.
The Fairy Godmother taps the girl with her wand. “What’s your name?”
The girl blinks, slides her jacket open to reveal a plastic nametag pinned to a white button-down shirt. Teal, it reads.
The Fairy Godmother says, “You’ll do.”
The Ascension of Teal Corinthian Bell, Part I
Teal sits radiant and golden under the lights. The studio audience is rapt. The Fairy Godmother sits on her couch at home, half-watching the television, half-focused on splitting open pistachios with her fingernails.
“It’s incredible,” the talk show host is saying, “how you came out of nowhere. Your story reads like a fairy tale. From penniless waitress to Academy Award winner in less than five years. How do you account for your sudden success?”
The Fairy Godmother looks up at the screen. She sees Teal smile and press her left hand to her chest. The Fairy Godmother mirrors the action. It’s their secret signal.
“I’m not sure how I got so lucky,” Teal says. “Sometimes I wonder if I deserve all this. I feel like kind of a fraud. I mean, why me?”
She tries for a laugh but there’s enough of an edge in her voice that the audience doesn’t join in. Teal lowers her gaze but the Fairy Godmother has already seen the fear she’s trying to hide.
“Teal, please.” The talk show host’s smile is wet and shiny. “You’re an inspiration. Your story reminds us all that there’s no telling what you can do if you work hard and stay true to your dreams. Isn’t that right, audience?”
The audience erupts into applause. Teal laughs again and raises her palms toward the crowd. Please, no, stop, her hands say.
Wings, Part II
The Fairy Godmother does not want to be married, although she often brings men home with her for the night. No matter how high she goes she can never out-fly her own desire.
The Importance of Specificity
People are always wishing for the wrong things. It makes the Fairy Godmother grumpy.
She sits in a café across from a man who won’t stop shaking his knees. It’s making the table vibrate. She can feel it through the mug that’s wrapped in her hands. He says, “I just need enough to pay off my credit card.”
The Fairy Godmother tucks her wand into her purse and stands to leave. “That’s what you said last time.”
On the way home she runs into a former client at the supermarket. She’s wearing a wide brimmed hat and sunglasses. “When I said I needed some hair removal,” she hisses, “I didn’t mean from my head.”
The Fairy Godmother just shrugs.
The Ascension of Teal Corinthian Bell, Part II
The Fairy Godmother learns the news on Facebook. Teal’s body has been found in a Paris hotel room. A toxic combination of prescription drugs, the reports say.
A Complication
The pregnancy is an accident. The father could be one of three men. She doesn’t look for any of them. The baby is a girl. The Fairy Godmother’s heart contracts when she sees the tiny furled wings on her daughter’s back.
At nine months the girl’s hummingbird wings already lift her toes off the floor. By two she can fly into treetops and transform chestnuts into fat ripe apples. They sleep in the same bed, her daughter’s warm body curled against her chest. Sometimes her wingtips tickle the underside of the Fairy Godmother’s chin, but she doesn’t mind.
At five the girl comes home crying from school because the children are afraid of her. They think she might use her wand to turn them into toads.
“Let them think you’re dangerous,” says the Fairy Godmother. “It’s better that way.”
Transformations
The Fairy Godmother changes bus boys into basketball stars. She changes interns into CFOs. She tucks tummies and reverses receding hairlines. She eliminates acne, erectile dysfunction, horrifying burn scars. She fills bank accounts. She puts food on empty plates and turns cardboard boxes into split-level homes. She rescues brittle, sharp-eyed children and builds them new lives in safer places.
How It Works
The Fairy Godmother and her daughter move into the glass castle. They keep the movie theatre but replace the pool with a vegetable garden. The Fairy Godmother is digging up carrots. Her daughter is jumping on the trampoline. She’s grown tall. Her legs are lean and muscled and her hair streams out behind her with each bounce.
“Why do you do that?” the Fairy Godmother asks. “You can fly.”
Her daughter does a back flip. “I like that helpless feeling you get on the way down.”
The Fairy Godmother pulls off her gardening gloves and wipes the sweat from her brow. “Don’t make yourself sick.”
Her daughter spreads her arms wide, falls forward onto her belly and bounces slowly to a stop. She rests her chin on her forearms.
“Hey Mom,” she says. “Check your pockets.”
The Fairy Godmother reaches into the pockets of her skirt. Her fingers touch something warm, soft, sticky. It’s a wad of gummy bears.
Wings, Part III
The Fairy Godmother flies low over the tops of buildings, wings whistling like wind through the crack of a door. Her wand sparks and snaps between her teeth. She listens to the pleas below, sifting, searching. She could touch any one of those voices. Or she could keep on flying.
WIFE OF BRAIN
(excerpt from Red Doc>)
Anne Carson
we enter we tell you
we are the Wife of Brain
at this point you have little grounds to complain we say
a red man unfolding his wings is how it begins then the lights
come on or go off or the stage
spins it’s like a play omnes
to their places
but
remember
the following faces
the red one (G)
you already know (what’s he done to his hair) his old friend
Sad
But Great
looks kind
beware
third Ida Ida is limitless and will soon be our king
scene is
a little red hut where G lives alone
time
evening
WHY BIRDS HAVE no
arms—if you are human
you fly with arms straight
out in front and horizontal
to the ground. To give
least resistance. Of course
it’s exhausting. Don’t fight
it just do it says G to his
arms. He visualizes little
pistons all over pumping
him forward and this helps
for a while but the ache is
spreading from his spine
in every direction. Down
the ice fault pours a steady
cold channel of headwind
against him. He knows he
is slowing and probably
looks ridiculous. Am I
turning into one of those
old guys in a ponytail and
wings he thinks sadly.
Something skims his
cheek. He waves at it
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