What happens when visual art inspires literature? Read works from four local writers, including the 2023-24 Saskatoon Public Library Writer-in-Residence, Meredith Hambrock, who were inspired by pieces from Remai Modern’s current exhibition Views from the Blue House: The Remai Modern Collection.
The writers presented their works at a public reading at Remai Modern in April, and now they’ve generously shared their writing here on Currents.
Big Lemon Day
Meredith Hambrock
In response to Roy Kiyooka’s Untitled (Hoarfrost)
Her cheese grater was rusty. It had been following her from house to house. From the mold-pocked basement suite she rented in university alongside the girl who chugged diet coke from two litre bottles to the twelfth-floor apartment she lived in with that man. Usually she pulled it out on quesadilla night, used it for waxy blocks of orange cheddar cheese she often stole from the store, not necessarily because she needed too, but because it felt like the right thing to do, thirteen ninety-nine, come on, for what? You’re telling me the President eats this? Really?
Tonight it was for zesting.
The lemon was giant, bloated in her hand, felt like one of those videos where you see an ostrich egg, where you anticipate the size of the yolk. The size of the insides. Huge. Wait for it to crack like a little kid, desperate to see the gargantuan yellow eyeball.
And the lemons weren’t sold by weight, they were priced individually. A dollar twenty nine. Grabbing this giant one felt like she was winning somehow. Like couponing. Like gathering points. She got the big lemon. Today, it was her turn to win, her turn to get bingo, her turn to walk away feeling a little better. Big lemon. It was big lemon day.
She’d never zested before. She’d grated, she’d chopped, she’d sauteed, she’d broiled, though that took some courage, what if she burned down her apartment, what if the pizza she’d slaved over for a half hour, stretching the dough slowly, flour everywhere, the sauce she’d slopped out of the container, what if it all went up in smoke because she was distracted watching a YouTube video about how to broil something. While her dinner burnt to a cracker.
Her cheese grater had two options for zesting, one little raised bits of puckered metal, and the other, a smaller grating hole, that delivered small strips. Which one to choose? Which one!
Now this seemed too simple to Google. Sometimes in life you had to make a decision and live with the consequences. So she tried one but the strips of lemon that peeled away didn’t look so much like the pile of lemon dust in the recipe video she’d watched so she used the other side. The smaller side.
Of course she grated her knuckle. Of course there was blood. She ran it under cold water, watched the red leak out. Spun on a Band-Aid, gave her finger a hug.
There had to be a muffin at the end of this. With no muffin, and a deadly injury, the tragedy of this entire encounter became immense. Who knew if she was up to date on her tetanus shot? What kind of adult kept track of that kind of thing?
Lemon poppyseed. With icing. Or a glaze. A glaze!
Maybe it was time to retire the box grater. But she felt so attached to it. When you’ve moved to so many apartments, bounced around the world, your focus constantly shifting, the telescope adjusting, zooming in and out, the picture becomes distorted, the volume loud, then quiet then loud again.
When you spend your life running, but not the kind of running that is meditative, transformational, no, sprinting, chasing something that probably doesn’t exist, so much so that your heart thunders, the taste of blood fills your mouth, it’s important to be tied to the ground somehow. Kept on the planet.
And here it was. Rusted over, but hanging in there. This cheese grater.
Rusted over but trying to kill her. Here she was: rusted over but hanging in there.
She hadn’t taken biology, had avoided it like the plagues that kept her awake at night, had no idea about tetanus, what it actually was, or what it meant, if it was a disease or a virus or a condition or a poison – a poison! She hadn’t even thought of a poison. It seemed so old timey to consider a poison. In the blood. A poison that could boil blood like acid. Yes, that could be tetanus. That could be it.
But then she considered all the nights she’d been using it, couldn’t remember the rust forming, how long. How long she’d been sliding strips of food over it. Thought of the tetanus turning up the temperature in her veins, then considered the rust on the box grater, held it up to the light, studying the thing like a jeweler gazing at the facets of a diamond, squinted at tiny pieces of lemon rind barely hanging on and wondered if eating rust, if that would kill her faster.
The stakes were high. But she needed the muffin, needed the burst of citrus, sweet tempered by sour, she needed to look death in his beady eye and smile. Say it was all worth it, her mouth full of crumbs, thick with icing. It was all worth it for this.
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Meredith Hambrock has worked in writing rooms on over 100 episodes of TV comedy. She most recently served as Executive Story Editor on the sitcom Corner Gas Animated where she wrote nine episodes of the Canadian Screen Award Winning series. In 2022, her episode “A Lot to Be Desired” was nominated for a Leo Award. Her debut mystery novel, Other People’s Secrets, was published in September by Crooked Lane Books and was called “audacious” and “fabulous” by the New York Times Book Review and was nominated for a Lefty Award in the Best Debut Mystery Category. Her second novel, She’s a Lamb! will be published in spring 2025 by ECW Press. She is the 2023-24 Writer in Residence at the Saskatoon Public Library.
Take-off
Azee Amoo
In response to Toni Onley’s Take-off
THREE
You were never supposed to live this long. To bear witness to the births and deaths of countless generations. Endless cycles of the rise and fall of civilizations. Nuclear warfare becoming obsolete, and the human species surviving despite all odds.
You’ve seen it all and you’re tired.
The last time you were involved with mortal affairs was when you, among the others involved in the program had to plead the case for your humanity.
At the time you were approached by the representatives of the most prolific medical research firm, you thought you would be doing some good. You didn’t have long to live, and being sickly since birth hindered your ability to make something of yourself greatly. You thought since science and medicine had invested so much into you with little payoff, the least you could do was give your body and at the very least contribute to the wellbeing of humanity as a test subject.
It was a cushy deal — you would be fed, housed, and the results of experimentation done on you could earn you a footnote in history. Either way, you had nothing to lose but the sick tomorrow had a chance of gaining something. Taking the offer by the two men in suits had been a no-brainer.
It wasn’t long before the necessary documents were signed and you were transported to the facility. Most of your life was lived within the hospital walls, so you relished the change of scenery. You met the others who had been selected for the program just as you were. They were with you during the orientation. They were with you during the initial drug trials. They were with you as some began to die off. They were with you after your first cybernetic implants. They were with you after the first suicide of your group. They were with you when you could no longer recognize yourself in the mirror. They were with you when the facility was raided by federal agents, until you were in custody of the government.
This is where you would have remained had it not been for a security breach that resulted in classified files being in the hands of the public. It brought to light the case of the defunct medical research company that had stood as a respected institution for decades, providing novel life-saving vaccines and therapeutic treatments. What was initially written off as conspiracy proved to be true, when the accounts of survivors grew too numerous to ignore. Behind the scenes for decades the company had been conducting gross mutilations and modifications of vulnerable populations. Grafting human heads on dogs, creating zits that grew into ears, bleach injected intravenously all under the guise of science.
For years following the closure, society had written it off as a dark chapter in history that had long been concluded. It acted as a cautionary tale for the evils of capitalism when left to its own devices within the medical industry. Following this dark chapter, the story of humanity continued to write itself but better.
They chose what they thought was the most ethical path. The well-being of all could not come at the expense of few. The human price of one was even too much to bear. You along with the others still left in the program were set free. After all, you were at the very least a derivative of human.
You’re still here dealing with the consquences of their ethics. Those at the company, those in government, and those who thought themselves on the right side of history, and their children, and their children’s children have long since passed.
Long after your case had been phased out of textbooks, you met up with those left of the original program. For a while things were fine. Others that found solace in their uniquely troubled past in a world that simply had no place for them.
Even if your tear ducts hadn’t been tampered with, you wouldn’t have been able to cry as you watched the last of your others succumb to the absolute failing of the mind. You envied those blessed with madness — they at least got to escape reality.
TWO
From a young age you became intimate with the condition of mortality.
As a child constantly in and out of hospitals, the term ‘friendship’ was often given out loosely. To the carousel of nurses and doctors that would attend to you, the elderly custodial that had the habit of leaving caramel candy drops behind, and the kids that allowed you to sign their casts after bonding over a shared interest in legos manifested in the structures created.
The first time you name someone a friend in the truest sense of the word, came about during one of your lengthy stays. Walking aimlessly about the linoleum-lined floors, you eventually found yourself just outside the cot of a boy about your age pressing himself to the window, as if he were trying to become one with the glass. Sensing your eyes on him, he turned suddenly to meet yours. Shocked by his abrupt motion, you wanted to leave but found yourself rooted in place — perhaps you had interrupted his… whatever he was doing.
He beckoned you to come over, and it was like you were under a trance. You found yourself suddenly beside him, gazing at the clear skies and passerbys. What had caught his interest? You asked him.
“Look, just over there, do you see it?”
Your eyes follow the direction that he’s pointing but still you see nothing out of the ordinary. “There, that bird. It fell, but it’s trying to get okay.”
You see it in the distance, a sad, frail little thing mostly visible to you by the haughty movement of the grass and surrounding leaves. You both watched in a companionable silence as the bird continued to flail about.
Though you clearly lacked the super vision ability of the boy, you could see that the bird had already been sick before its wing or leg — you couldn’t be sure — had been injured. Its feathers were patchy and dull and lifeless. It looked old, worn and decrepit. Time could be seen on its body and yet it continued to fight as if it had many years to live for.
What a tragedy. This bird was clearly about to die shortly, but it didn’t have the ability to recognize the fact and choose to simply let it be.
ONE
This merging into a single consciousness had been a long time in the making, the next supposed step for humanity according to The Collective. You’ve noticed a pattern emerge. It seems after periods of peace, people get restless. More often than not this results in global conflict, but sometimes it leads to great advances that you can’t help but appreciate.
As a conscious, The Collective will export humanity into the universe in search of other sentients. You can only imagine a fraction of the possibilities that may be out there. Are there other civilizations also taking similar steps into the inky dark abyss fueled by the hope of finding others? Will they be friendly or hostile? Will they join with humanity and continue to merge with the lifeforms they may come across? Is this the ultimate goal of life, to connect?
It dully dawns on you that you may be witnessing the last take-off of humanity. A species that branched off from fish that dared to not only wonder what it may be like to be on the surface, but actually experienced it. A species that sent one of their own to step foot on the moon just because. A species that decided that wasn’t enough and had to touch the stars.
As fantastical as being part of this great journey would be, the fact that all that would be left of you would be nothing more than an essence stopped you from entertaining the idea any further. Already on this Earth, bound to a vessel, death is almost unattainable. To imagine what it would take to die as a form of energy… you may have to wait for the end of the universe.
Finding yourself in accidents never proved to be enough — your death would have to be a delibrate choice. A slow, intentional process unscrewing tiny screws, breaking welded connections, and disconnecting wires.
This is not what you came to terms with. You’ve always been fine with dying, and as the years dragged on you craved for it. To die by your own hand is something else entirely.
You’re long past overdue and for all intensive purposes, more machine than human. You passed the opportunity of the collective take-off to experience your own. When you die, go offline — are no more in this plane of existence, you will finally rest.
There’s the pillar of light that shoots off into the sky in the distance, and spills over long past its surroundings. You wonder if there’s enough mortality left in you to allow you the sight of a similar beacon. The last pilgrimage many from your era believed they had to complete when they die.
Whether it was after ten minutes or an hour — the passage of time has long been optional for you to pay mind to — the excess light dissipates, leaving your optical sensors to re-adjust. The world’s colours are off, but it doesn’t stop you from making out a group of nomad Fundamentalists that stayed behind and rejected the call to explore the beyond in the distance travelling towards you.
When they reach you they will scavenge your sub-human vessel for useful elements. Metals that can be melted down and repurposed, wires that can be stripped, and what’s left of your organic material that will be composted.
You power down your optics and cease your habitual breathing. After some thought, you decide to off your hearing and touch sensors as well. Maybe the processes will be easier if you’re unable to perceive what is going on.
You had to stop yourself from immediately booting your systems back up as you were enveloped in nothingness. The first land-fish were probably afraid too. The first men on the moon knew logically and scientifically that they would meet no life, but there had to have been at least one ‘what if’.
Your end would have come at some point — all residents of the universe will eventually succumb to the force of entropy, no matter how hard they fight it. At least you get to meet your end under the guise of humanity. A touch of fear mixed with wonder of what could be waiting for you next. You get to go under romantic notions that you’re doing so with dignity.
If it is true that you relive every moment before you are no more, you’ve got a lot of files to sift through. You might as well give yourself a head start.
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Azee Amoo is a fourth-year student studying Business Economics at the University of Saskatchewan. Born and raised in Calgary, her second home has become Saskatoon after moving here for school. She’s heavily involved in the campus community, part of groups such as UNICEF USask, Peer Health and the USask Menstrual Project. A self-proclaimed creative spirit, Azee enjoys engaging with the arts and is currently working on honing her writing craft. As a copy editor for The Sheaf Publishing Society, she’s also had the chance to publish articles on topics ranging from world events to modern-day dating. This is her debut in the professional creative writing sphere. Amoo is an avid book collector (and in theory, reader as well), always open to trying new things, and nine times out of ten can be found with a different hobby than the last you saw her with.
“Visitors Are Invited to Register”
Josiah Nelson
In response to Alex Colville’s Visitors are Invited to Register
Visitors are invited to register
tall columns, grey walls, windows
waxy with light. A flight of stairs
that exists mostly
as implication, how an opened door
in the corner suggests creaks
against alder or oak. Imagine
sitting in the song of the room’s
silence so long you can almost hear
a melody of moments, preserved
in the walls, the airy hall, but too soon
broken by your own footsteps.
Some gaps we decide to fill in
with ourselves: before the man
rose from the pew, he must
have been staring
at the alter, but what memories
was he hoping to see. So many
parishioners, eyes eager and wide,
blending together. Others come to him
on their own: the farmer who smelled
like flaxseed, body titled, cup
tipped to his lips, grime always
wedged beneath his fingernails;
the woman with sharp, speckled glasses,
bulletin cutting heavy air, curly
brown hair in every direction.
How something happens
and you either leave or
stay: the farmer’s son died
of asthma in the wheatfield
and the farmer is back each Sunday;
the woman with glasses
who crunched the wafer for years,
without notice, started drifting
out of the frame. After looking so long
at the alter, the man must have wanted
to see himself. Maybe he realized
a place is only a place
until it becomes you. A white beam
on the second story slants toward
brown railing that leads down
the stairs; the man leans back,
lets his arm rest, angled
to the same degree. He registers a mirror
image: his body,
like every body,
a church of hurt.
“Self-Portrait Beginning With a Phrase by Marie Howe”
I have been like you
worried about the walls
around my life, how the past
can encase the present. A childhood
memory: my father at the pulpit,
grainy wool suit, while
brother whispers, wants
to know why father can’t preach
about the Maple Leafs. Mother,
pink lipstick, pleated pants,
seated at the piano, and
me, blonde hair combed
over, thick and sticky with gel.
Grandmother always said
I was her little pastor, like
her husband, also scared to speak
as a boy, like Moses, said
all are called in time. A single
sentence became the room
I’m still living in, how anchorites
showed their devotion
by never leaving their cells.
I have stared at the man
before the mirror and wondered
if it was actually a doorway.
The little boy with fingers folded
in his lap will never fully fade
in the deep grey of my memory.
I’ve heard some mystics
sought God in the dark cloud
of unknowing, and though I am sure
of so little, each time I open a door
in a dark room, I like to think God is
a boundless burst of light.
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Josiah Nelson holds an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan, where he teaches creative writing. His work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Contemporary Verse 2, Grain, Hunger Mountain, The Nashwaak Review, Queen’s Quarterly, The Rumpus, and Saskatoon’s poetry initiative, Poetry Downtown. He’s currently working on his first collection of poems.
Impressions
Jaime Speed
In response to Sandra Semchuk’s Baba’s Garden
If I made up a memory of you
it would be all green splotches
fragments of you emerging
like light dancing to touch
each leaf, barely visible yet soft
as the tattoo rain leaves behind, forgetting
this is work to be tender, with care
I practice being planted
like you are, into this place
When I dream of you it’s our
moments in close-up
you show me how little bugs can be
just a giggle of wings in our hands
how something made of branches
touches you here where I did once
how the drooping spine
of leaves forms its own cradle
of protection, vulnerable
and wild like the years
that would ravage your rows
when you pointed to the seedlings sprouting
I’m sorry I didn’t see
your map unfolding all around me
If I paint a photograph of you it’s their
beating hearts just beneath the surface
something I can scuff with my fingers
like you did, I borrow your arms tired
and your lightness, dusting back
the dirt to see their pulses
crop up, eager for the movement
of sun, its bend and its stoop around
its roads and its alleyways, this tapestry
of moments becomes familiar
as imprints, a trail we’ve stamped
down for our daughters to follow, tumbling
into fields knowing they’ll shoot back up
dazzling, sheathed in your green
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Jaime Speed (she/her) is a Saskatoon-based poet who has been published in The Rat’s Ass Review, Hobo Camp Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Channel, New Feathers Anthology, The Wild Word, Eunoia Review, Flora Fiction, Best Small Fictions, Hole in the Head Review, and Literary Mama, along with numerous other journals, collections, and anthologies. Her poetry is inspired by themes of family, place, grief, and love. She believes in art and kindness and loves pugs and coffee. You can find her poetry in downtown Saskatoon as part of the Poetry Downtown project, supported by the City of Saskatoon, Downtown Saskatoon and the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada. Find her online at jaimespeed.ca and on Instagram.
