Launched August 2023
Editor’s Note
Editor’s Note
Can you believe that what you’re holding, right now, is untethered magazine’s fourteenth volume, and that 33 volunteers made it possible? Well, believe it! 33 dedicated readers, editors, copy editors and proofreaders brought Volume 14 to life. And as the new managing editor, I am filled with gratitude for all our volunteers, including untethered’s two newest team members— fiction editor, Hollay Ghadery, and nonfiction editor, Conyer Clayton—who both possess an unparalleled level of passion, skill, professionalism and kindness.
Speaking of bringing life to something (see how I segued there), I think it’s safe to say this phrase is a pretty well- established metaphor. But why use a metaphor anyway? What is it about metaphor that’s so appealing? In the opening lines of Sreekanth Kopuri’s poem, “Sea Moments,” the beginnings of an answer to these questions emerge: “[sea moments] [t]hese are common / till metaphor disturbs us / with intuition / like the silver blinks / that surface it.”
So where do we search for metaphor? Which objects shimmer at us? It could be a painting or a stuffed animal; a dress or a tarot card; an E-book, a plum, a dandelion or even a Muppet. We might be in church, gym class or the kitchen; cave diving or hobnobbing at a party. Maybe our subconscious is most susceptible while we’re distracted with other activities, like sorting yogurt cartons, sautéing onions or masturbating. In whatever thing or place we find it, the prose and poetry in Volume 14 speak to our tendency to make the seemingly mundane meaningful.
Because everything has to have meaning, right? But what if it doesn’t. What if we should simply be “laughing, giddy at our great, great fortune just to be here” (“When it Fits,” Višnja Milidragović). I leave it up to you, dear readers, to decide.
-Elena
Sea Moments
Manginipudi, Machilipatnam
Sreekanth Kopuri
These are common
till metaphor disturbs us
with intuition
like these silver blinks
that surface it
to read the fishy school beneath
in its defining locomotion.
Tired of soaring to fathom
this in its fish-eye, my thought-gull
lands on the boat stern and
watches my grandmother
crouch in its shadow
holding a seer fish like a question.
She cuts it
against the boti blade,
for the day’s answers,
which fall in coiled lumps
of burning rawness
that do not end in smoke, but
still drip with bleeding roe
only to be dragged
off our knowledge
by some ravenous mischief
always wandering off
with dogged face.
I call that village photographer,
who holds a smile
for those who, like me,
try to buy these paper moments,
he clicks out a few cards
that slip like my hundred rupee
from his hand
to buy his crisp day
only to be crunched
at his drunken night.
Before I reason these,
a glossal momentum billows
and breaks into chorus—
twilight’s first boatmen float off
with the huoh-huohs
of the day’s last gulls
to catch another day.
Rumour has it Liz
Ana Reisens
had sex with Jake on the bathroom floor of her dad’s condo. Alyssa says it was romantic, like Pemberley or Patchouli-scented candles, but we all know sex is a slippery thing. Jake is the fingers of the football team, but he’s no Peyton Manning. There was definitely fumbling. Mildew. Hard water stains against grey tiles. Did Liz enjoy it? Did she orgasm? Can a quarterback get a girl to orgasm at 15? Teen Vogue says YES!, but I’d like the evidence. Maybe a survey of all the seniors-doing-juniors of the world, or perhaps just the ones north of the Bible Belt. I think rumours have the same variability as questionnaires, at least the ones that circulate over sinks. I smudged my lip gloss when Alyssa told me. I loved Jake the way a toddler eats candy: all thumbs, blushing and sticky. But watching him tongue his gum into Liz’s mouth after third period felt dirty. They’re a thing now, Alyssa explains, the information dripping from her hands beneath the blow dryer. Maybe they’ll do it on his mom’s futon this weekend. Maybe he’ll find her clitoris. Maybe they’ll go to IHOP after and order strawberry pancakes. Maybe, I agree, but probably not. Jake doesn’t have a job and I bet he has practice, so Liz’ll have to stay back to clean the futon. What do you think is more romantic: a futon or a bathroom? I’m about to ask Alyssa, but a toilet flushes. Love, I’ve come to believe, is a pulled-out sofa at the very least.
The Mouth is Your Hardest and Softest Place
Lisa Baird
The salivary glands
release a litre of saliva each day.
Seventy-two strains
of bacteria grow there.
The estrogen surge at ovulation
makes crystals in saliva
in the shape of ferns.
A forest floor under
the tongue, visible
by microscope. It’s called
ferning. Proteins in saliva
stimulate the growth
of blood vessels.
It’s why we lick
our wounds. Enzymes
in saliva can kill sperm.
Rock scissors paper,
rock saliva sperm.
Salivary gland stones
grow like mutant teeth
or claws or tiny coffins,
blocking the flow
of saliva in a mouth
repeatedly forced
to swallow. The dry
mouth is a stalled verb.
The dry tongue can’t
taste anything, can’t tend
its wounds or scream
its way out of the woods.
Enzymes in saliva
prevent bloodstains
from setting. Saliva conquers
blood. Rock saliva blood.
All our sheets, still white.
When it Fits
Višnja Milidragović
It was the regal colour of the dress that had drawn me in briefly, but the feel of the material that held my attention. I had stopped in the aisle and was rubbing the silk under my thumb when Cara stepped up behind me. “Ooh, you found one. Come, let’s have you try it on.”
As I pay, the storekeeper says to me, “If you leave the tags on, you can still return it for credit within two days, with proof of purchase.” I notice Cara rolling her eyes. I ask if I can have the dress wrapped up, pretty ribbon and tissue paper and all. “Sure,” the girl tells me with a smile. “Gift receipt?” Then Cara exclaims like some wound-up doll, “Yah, girl! Treat yourself,” flicking her bangled wrist emphatically at me.
“Actually, it’s a gift for my mom,” I say to her.
I’m going to bring the dress to her that evening to try on.
I imagine her smiling in the mirror, beaming at the
splendour of her old self in the reflection, turning this way and that, the navy fabric smooth under her touch. But I will hold back the oohs and aahs and compliments. Instead, I’ll ask her, “Mama, how do you feel?”
I do pocket the receipt, just in case. The dress just might not fit. She may not want it, however badly I want it for her. But at least, I can tell her it’s no big deal. That we can buy something else. Coffee and a lemon square? Like old times, when we walked for hours after school through Vancouver’s West Side, gawking at the mansions of Kerrisdale and Shaughnessy and laughing, giddy at our great, great fortune just to be here.
Spelunk
Edie Reaney Chunn
a tendency to imagine
if we remember
the order in which things
happened (were first
set down, were written
in stone, were carved into
tunnels and walls that
curved) we hold a
loft that something
lost
... but not always
are the arteries so
clear : when alone,
spelunkingly in
quire for wings to
fly with, to dive dive
dive with, to trysohardto
define
the tendency
to believe
the subsurfaceloric is
what’s tumbled, sliptripped and
lingered below ;
as elsewise
it’s what
we looked back at
to leave there.
This issue includes new work by Lisa Baird, Harman Burns, Edie Reaney Chunn, Kim Fahner, Kate Hargreaves, Mark Keane, Katie Kemple, Sreekanth Kopuri, Heather C. Krueger, Grace Kwan, Višnja Milidragović, filipa pajevic, Ana Reisens, Emma Rhodes, Krissi Stocks, Paula Turcotte, Andy Weaver and Lucy Zhang.
Cover art by Andrea Wan
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