What We’re Talking About in Issue 0902 (December 2024)
The complete table of contents
as it appears in the December 2024 issue of Blank Spaces.
from the editor—Particular Magic
shameless — When her father insists on bringing her young children to dine with a local cult, Patti Edgar confronts her fears about his vulnerability and control—exploring the delicate dance of power, belonging, and family bonds through an uncomfortable evening that reveals more abut their relationship than any birthday dinner should in her telling piece One More Apostle Than You.
Snowbound in the House of God by John RC Potter is a touching meditation on irony, redemption, and unexpected sanctuary, as a self-proclaimed agnostic finds himself forced to take refuge in a church during a Christmas Eve blizzard, discovering that divine shelter comes in many forms.
The Bridges of Madison Square Garden is a tender reflection on lost love and missed connections as Michael McGrath, a self-proclaimed “softie” confronts his complicated relationship with hockey and winter sports in Canada.
fiction — In Ghosts Left on Our Skin, Ace Baker presents a searing exploration of how war systematically dehumanizes its victims, erasing individual identities, and reducing people to interchangeable parts in a cruel machine that perpetuates itself across generations.
Alison Gadsby offers a poignant exploration of grief, jealousy, and displaced anger in her story Everything was Fine Before Lisa Got Here, as a young girl grapples with her father’s death while fixating on a new classmate who threatens her imagined connection with her teacher and forces her to confront her unprocessed emotions.
In Bones, a coming-age-tale by Dorothy Jane Kavanaugh, two young girls’ discovery of mysterious bones in a polluted river forces them to confront adult secrets and social division in their small town, testing their friendship and challenging their understanding of truth, justice, and the complexity of grown-up morality.
flash fiction — A hiker’s casual relationship with life’s suffering is challenged when he stumbles upon a hermit who shares a profound philosophical perspective that all living beings are interconnected, in Gareth Mark’s short story, Unusual Shelter.
Grizzly Mountain by Andrew Shaughnessy is a tale of tension and performance at a dude ranch, exploring the thin lines between truth, adventure, and manipulation through the interactions of city dwellers and ranch hands.
red solo cup — Through two poems of the same name, The Ulterior Purpose of Colour, Helen Robertson critically examines systems of control through distinctly different poetic approaches: one through visceral imagery and emotional confrontation, the other through philosophical questioning and structural deconstruction.
Véronik Le Duc makes three offerings of poetry—Colours, A Natural Disaster, and Breathe—in which she explores how individuals are shaped by elemental forces and how these natural processes mirror internal emotional landscapes of change, vulnerability, and resilience.
Ken Haigh examines how human intention and natural processes intersect through his poems The Pear Tree, The Grouse, The Trail Spider, and Re-Shingling the Shed Roof—exploring the tension between deliberate shaping and inherent wildness.
story matters — In The Ur-Text, Ken Haigh presents a wry exploration of academic pretension, intellectual performance, and the delicate art of misunderstanding—where a single misheard word leads to unexpected connection and reveals the absurd performative nature of scholarly discourse.
different strokes — Multi-disciplinary artist Amos Shelley transforms colour and narrative into portals of discovery—crafting immersive worlds where art and story converge to reveal the extraordinary within the ordinary in Chasing the Light.
between the lines — Gail M. Murray brings us a review of The Newfoundland Lunch Party by Canadian author, Sonia Day.
write prompt challenge winner — Doris von Tettenborn presented a strong contest entry with her short fiction Rubber Boots, one that the judges called “intriguing” and “vivid.”
final word — Luke Sawczak presents a meditation on human boundaries: how barriers—physical and metaphorical—simultaneously protect and isolate us, revealing our deep interconnectedness while masking our shared vulnerabilities in his poignant poem, Fences.
