I had smiled absurdly, with no observable impetus, and the two women that were my company had noticed. I then took from my brain a simple story as to why. Between the smile and the story there was a lag in the room. It was choppy with silence. (Seated, as we were, at the cognitive assembly.) The story was creamy, about a hot butch in a tub and the practice of quietly and resentfully submitting to whirlpool guidelines. The practice of a look—ten to fifteen minutes may be excessive for some individuals—which is not illegal. A handsome woman. In and out in under five. The two that were my company believed the story which was true but not the reason for my smile. My smile remained opaque, a privacy I could not reveal without shattering the scene and so I leaned toward a muteness. And so, I failed to entertain. Now we were below ground, bodies bobbing, taking our beers by the necks. Plastered were the walls with commemorative plaques. The light was low and warm. Only the rear legs of a chair graced the floor as a woman (younger) dodged the ass end of a pool cue. I was almost hit by a dart. Running out of places to walk and sit went a long way to producing the night’s desirable effects: people seen and people doing the seeing. With whirlpools as with night, nothing is written about the ocular impulse and its relationship to the mouth. No one person is billed fully responsible.
—
Lindsay Miles is among the winners of the 2017 Blodwyn Memorial Prize. Her work has appeared in Poetry is Dead, Bad Nudes, Plenitude, The Maynard and elsewhere. With a Creative Writing MFA from the University of Guelph, Lindsay is the author of the digital chapbook, A Period of Non-Enforcement (The Operating System, 2019). She lives in Toronto.