They call it the farm. It’s a three-storey brick and wood building standing in sharp brown contrast against the graphite sky. We drove fifteen minutes out of the city, across one overpass and underneath another, to come here, to this gravel driveway.
Rising above the gravel driveway is a hedge of caragana and a chain link gate; rising above that, the second storey of the house, its floor to ceiling windows punctuated by blue pillars of drapes; rising above that, the third floor and its single round window.
Through the gate, the garden is revealed. A picnic table sits next to a bed overgrown with delphiniums and hollyhocks, their stalks pointing straight up as if to indicate the gathered clouds. Six people are seated at the table; their gazes settle on us and recognition crosses some of their faces. Vincent’s friends Sarah and Dan smile at us; another friend of Vincent’s, Evelyn, has her hair tucked behind her ear with a massive red flower. Next to Evelyn is Connor; Connor inherited the farm two summers ago after her dad died during the heatwave. Two strangers with brown hair are seated furthest away. One has shoulder length brown hair, dark and smooth against pale skin. The other has short, bushy brown hair shot through with gold, flashing despite the filtered light.
Sarah and Dan both stand up to greet us and we each get a hug from Sarah; in black shorts and a short sleeve collared shirt, her skin is tanned and slapped with red. It stands out. When she hugs me I feel the warmth of her skin through our clothes. Vincent and Dan have started talking about bicycles. Vincent is taller than Dan and has to slouch a little to speak and be heard clearly. Vincent’s skin has the same red flush as Sarah’s; I wonder if mine does too. The wondering pulls me out of my body.
Dan is freckled, with jaw length curly blond hair in a non-cut. His conversation with Vincent has become more excited, a vein is poking out of Vincent’s neck. What does the vein mean? I tune back in to the story Sarah is telling me:
“Anyway, I was so hungover the next day all I could do was lay in bed and take small bites of this chicken salad sandwich for like 12 hours. That was all I could do.”
I respond, “Fuck, that sounds wild.”
Alana emerges from a blue painted wooden door in the side of the house, calling across the yard, “Oh my gooodness! all the babes are here!”
Alana is tall with caramel skin. Her hair, dyed a dark shade of green, is piled on top of her head; “Connor baby, would you come grab this?”
She’s carrying a wooden board covered in shining cheeses. Connor comes up to Alana’s shoulders. Alana leans down for a kiss before Connor skips away with the cheese board. Alana presses her body against me; her skin feels cool and soft; she smells like beer, weed, and garlic.
Alana, Sarah, Dan, Vincent, and I inch toward the picnic table as Connor, Evelyn, and the two brown-haired people dash back and forth to the house, carrying out big bowls and platters of food.
Alana tells Vincent and I that the two brown haired people are friends Connor met planting trees one year: Erica (shoulder length hair) and Tyson (short hair). They’re brother and sister. Tyson works as a city landscaper with Dan. Erica sells vintage on Instagram. Her handle: @jeanzqu33n.
Sarah has now popped a bottle of sparkling rosé, which she pours into mason jars. Connor sparks a blunt and we start to settle around the table. Evelyn smiles and waves at me from across the table. I compliment her: “I love your red flower”
“Thank you – I picked it in my mom’s garden.”
“It’s really beautiful.”
Her face lights up; “do you know the Gertrude Stein poem?”
I don’t know the poem, so she gets out her phone; Connor passes me the blunt and I begin to inhale.
“‘A dark grey, a very dark grey, a quite dark grey is monstrous ordinarily, it is so monstrous because there is no red in it. If red is in everything it is not necessary. Is that not an argument for any use of it and even so is there any place that is better, is there any place that has so much stretched out.’ It just felt appropriate.”
The air becomes more humid, and Evelyn’s red flower gains complexity in my mind.
“That’s really beautiful,” I say.
Alana is now next to Connor; she asks what we’re talking about.
Evelyn says, “A poem.”
Alana says, “Oh.”
Tyson sits down next to me, and Erica sits next to him.
“Tyson, do you want some of this blunt, baby?” says Alana, passing it across Connor’s face.
Tyson’s arm reaches in front of my chest; the texture of his skin comes into my field of vision and I begin to count his freckles before they’re pulled away from me. Vincent takes a seat across the table, locks eyes on me for a second and does not smile; the vein has disappeared. Evelyn gives him a hug and they start talking.
Alana is now starting to rotate the dishes. She has prepared a massaged kale salad with almonds and grapes, garlic roasted squash and chickpeas, a lemon tahini pasta with toasted pumpkin seeds, focaccia wafting rosemary, baked marinated tofu, and steamed vegetables glistening and flecked with salt: green beans, asparagus, thin rainbow carrots.
Tyson’s thigh is touching my thigh. Where our legs meet on the bench, the radiant heat from his body moves through the fabric of his pants and the fabric of my pants. It’s a strange communication, I think, taking the last gulp of my mason jar of sparkling rosé. Condensation has gathered on the bottom of the jar, and I cannot help but hold the jar in the final position of my gulp, focusing and unfocusing my eyes; seeing through the bottom of the jar, letting the dew obscure the image; watching the strange blobby shape of Evelyn’s flower, watching it dissolve into an even blobbier smear. I lower the glass and Evelyn is looking at me, so is Vincent. I smile and we all laugh.
“More sparkling rosé?”
“Pass me that massaged kale salad.”
Alana sparks another blunt.
There’s dessert now: blueberry fool, a peach gelatin mold with a mint leaf for the stem, and a honey cornbread cake.
“That was the last sparkling rose, but we’ve got a ton of beer,” says Connor.
Everyone stands and I look around again.
The sky has become darker, and the line of floor to ceiling windows on the farm’s second storey have begun to show the quality of the indoor lights; the blue drapes illuminated from within are conversing with the grey and white dappled sky.
The circular window of the third floor is unlit, staring out on the landscape with the confidence of a closed eye.
Inside, dishes are piled in the kitchen. We add the dishes from outside and Connor opens the fridge to reveal the beer. A tight crowd forms around and disperses from the glow of the fridge as Vincent, Dan, Tyson, Erica, Connor, and Alana filter back into the garden.
Evelyn, Sarah, and I sit in the living room, picking at the last of the cornbread cake.
“Do you guys want whiskey sours?” asks Sarah. She has brought the supplies.
Evelyn wants one. A flush is rising in her face and her shoulders have descended. Her red flower is changing texture in its petals, they are becoming softer, more velvety. She’s smiling and looking around, taking in the decor of the living room – the upholstery of the mid-century sofa, the reclaimed wood tables, the plants of different sizes. The rich, earthy smell of the room is suddenly all over me.
Evelyn is barefoot, and her toes make contact with the rug. I can feel it through some sense. But which one?
I say, “Thanks Sarah, but I think I do want a beer.”
I take a beer from the fridge and go back outside.
Alana has laid out a blanket on the other side of the bed of hollyhocks and delphiniums; she, Erica, Dan, and Tyson are smoking another blunt.
“Baby, get over here!” Alana yells.
Connor turns away from a conversation with Vincent at the picnic table to follow Alana’s voice before realizing who Alana was calling. Her gaze shifts to me. The interruption draws Vincent’s eyes as well.
How intoxicated are we? I use the rift in time created by Alana’s voice to ask myself this question. I use my eyes to search everyone else’s. I look first into Vincent’s, then Connor’s, then Erica’s, Dan’s, Tyson’s – they have also half-turned toward me – and finally, Alana’s; she is displaying an expression of total uninhibited bliss. The moment evaporates as Connor and Vincent resume their discussion of pronouns in the workplace.
When I sit, Dan asks where Sarah is.
“She’s making whiskey sours.”
“Oh shit, I love those whiskey sours.” Dan hits the blunt and passes it to me before getting up to go inside.
Alana tells me about the seminar she’s taking on human sexuality: “It’s a bit of a pain in the ass to drive into the city every day, but honestly the payoff, living out here with the peace and everything, is really good for my mental health, so, you know.”
I crack my beer, “Yeah, definitely, that’s so important.”
Connor and Vincent are standing by the blanket now.
“We’re going inside for whiskey sours too. Do you babes want one?” asks Connor.
Alana, Tyson, and I do not, but Erica does, so she joins their group. Erica looks at me as she stands up. Something is understood.
Alana, Tyson, and I finish the blunt. Alana and Connor have been growing their own.
“It’s a bit of a problem though because we’re becoming such hedonists,” says Alana, laughing.
Tyson is attentive to Alana: he stares at her when she speaks, but in a way that looks interested, not invasive. His eyes are small and dark brown like his hair. He’s wearing a beige cotton Henley with long sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and the buttons undone at the neck; sitting with his legs out in front of him, leaning back on his arms, the shirt has ridden up from the waistband of his jeans revealing a sliver of his flesh in the shape of a mouth. Washed blue jeans. Regular jeans. Frayed fibres at the fly. White threads poking through where the denim is worn. Fine dark hair coats his stomach. The bottom of the shirt now covers barely his navel. A shadowy depression in the fabric reveals the navel’s position. This detail causes me to stop.
Tyson smiles phenomenally at Alana, and turns to me, in expectation. I smile broadly back and we all laugh.
Alana kisses us both on the mouth and leaves behind the taste of lemon. She stands up and goes inside for a whiskey sour; an empty can of Twisted Tea light remains on the blanket – 25% less sugar than regular twisted tea.
Tyson lays down on his back and I do the same.
“Do you think it’ll rain,” he says.
“I don’t know.”
“There’s a tornado warning apparently.”
The night has nearly arrived. The farm sits on the blackened clouds. The vague texture of light seen through the second floor window falters and dissolves. The window becomes a mirror. The eye of the third floor seems to open.
“Should we leave?”
I imagine the heap of drunk bodies in the living room, piled one on top of the other or maybe distinct on separate surfaces. Sarah whispering in Dan’s ear. Alana smiling, cradling Connor. Vincent somewhere near Evelyn.
Warmth wafts over me from Tyson’s location.
“Yeah let’s go,” I say. “Do you want to go back to my place?”
“Sure.”
I straddle the rack of Tyson’s bicycle and he pedals down the highway – hypnotic lines flash through the white circle created on the asphalt by his front light. The red light shining from behind somehow makes its presence known as well.
The air rushing into my face is so cold. The air is slapping me in the face, and I love the air.
After forty-five minutes we stop under the first overpass.
“I thought maybe we could get a bottle of wine,” says Tyson.
His breath fills my brain.
We buy a bottle of wine from the offsale under the overpass.
Sailing across the second overpass, I am enveloped by the smell of Tyson’s scalp.
We reach the rental I share with Vincent. I hop off and Tyson drags his bike across the curb and through a flowerbed I planted by the sidewalk. Three lilies with broken necks lie on the sidewalk. Cosmic Raspberry? Or Galactic Queen? It’s hard to tell in the light from the street lamps. Should I pick them up?
“Where should I lock this?”
“The rail by the front steps is fine.”
I labour up the three cement steps; my legs feeling fresh and empty.
The wine has a screw top; we drink from the bottle in bed. I run my hands through the hair on Tyson’s arms and he puts his fingers in my mouth. The wine gets set down and we fall asleep.
Outside the bedroom window is the green hush of the backyard, and then, against the empty sound of the night, one dog calling existence back into the world, answered by another, farther away, and another farther away: echoing concentric circles, enclosures, collars, perfumes, territories…
What are they saying?
what are they saying?
what are they saying?
In the morning, Tyson slides out of bed and says he’s going to have breakfast with his dad. They have a good relationship. Tyson’s boxer briefs fit poorly; the elastic has been worn out. The slack fabric draped on his body still looks hot. I pause and try to remember when we undressed.
Tyson unlocks his bike from the handrail and sails away down the block, without looking back. I notice the crushed lilies and the last twelve hours flash across the front wall of my mind. In the morning light I can tell they are Galactic Queen. I go toward them, planting my foot on the first step down from the house. Pain blooms inside me as the back of my ankle splits open, like a dry lip smiling, and a single tear rolls down my heel, quenching the cement.
Alasdair Rees lives in Saskatoon where he teaches French at the University of Saskatchewan. His first book of poems, Mon écologie, appeared in June 2021 with Les éditions du blé and won the Prix du Livre Français at the Saskatchewan Book Awards. His work has appeared in Ancrages, GUTS, and la Revue Mœbius, and is forthcoming in Estuaire.
Jocelyn Ulevicus is an American artist, writer, and poet. In her visual work, you’ll encounter colorful & energetic floral arrangements. At the same time, in her writing, she more closely explores her experiences of being a woman growing through and beyond loss and trauma. Her work is either forthcoming or published in magazines such as SWWIM Every Day, The Free State Review, Blue Mesa Review, Humana Obscura and elsewhere. Ulevicus is a Pushcart and Best Poets nominee, and her in-progress memoir, The Birth of a Tree, was shortlisted for the 2019 Santa Fe Literary Awards Program. Her favorite quality in a person is kindness to strangers and animals. You can follow her work on Instagram: @jocelyn.ulevicus or visit her website: www.jocelynulevicus.com