B. Kenneth Brown

In the winter, the prairie sky is elongated. The tilt of the earth stretches the end-of-the-day into a perpetual blue hour. Shadows lengthen early, harbouring the past. The wooded creek behind my childhood home, just a few blocks away from where I live now, darkens to a chocolate dim before the sun even nears the horizon. When I first moved to Calgary, I ended up in the neighbourhood of Killarney, a block away from 17th Avenue.

To answer the specific questions being asked—of who I am within my origin, and describe my own history and place—is not plainly possible. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the people and storykeepers living on this continent for thousands of years were brutalized.

The burning sensation is fierce—the leaves and flowers of what I thought were Box Elders and Skunkbush caress against my exposed ankles before I even realized. Tingling spreads up my calves, the ivy cold and numbing. I stood at the edge of the small stream of running water. Unremarkable. The water, more of a trickle than a stream, winds through patchwork of pebbles and occasional boulders.

We start at the beginning. The anti-burial. You are being opened by the eyelids. What’s her name, again? You try to recall the colours ahead of you, and you can’t. The receipt for the store still in your jeans. The bottle used to carry wine. It’s difficult to stand up. Think hard about a location, maybe home.

Holding sunburnt breath, across bow valley
i thread & braid for the first time,
yr only acres away, across bow trail
    ought i stand up from my desk? reach across chasm & confess?

There are at times, the good nights—
    where there’s felt the softness of lilacs,
    their color deciding to fill up the morning sky.
There are blossomed animals, soft and dreary-eyed,
    I witness them from the window of my room,
    the glass felt more like a clear. heavy water.

The spring is humble in the prairies⁠ — she does not boast, nor does she shine. Instead offering a gentle, cold wind. Air for the metallic, uneasy blossoms to grow within. Every so often⁠ from the garden ground⁠ will sprout — the landed lighthouse! A simple vessel⁠ springing up from the soil⁠ — like a lost, wandering watercraft. She does not truly know her place, nor does she care.

Each day, we inch closer towards the supermassive black hole That gives us a stability, and will one day inevitably consume us.

“When there’s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.” —Stars, “Your Ex-Lover is Dead”

(Put your shoes on. Where are you going, and why are you going there? There is will when it comes to the coming and going. A voluntary compulsion. Perhaps this autotomy is mandatory, for if we do not choose our traveling then it no longer is travel. It is then a forced migration.)

Dear diary, you are completely worthless.
For the past fifteen years I’ve filled yr pages
I’ve hurt my hand trying to describe
Each & every joy & trauma to you.
In intricate detail.
These endless notebooks that compromise yr soul,
Yellowed paper, faded graphite, bleeding ink
A lifetime of stories, of people, of places
All of which don’t matter.
Or rather, will be forgotten.
In spite of my best efforts throughout the years,
Why didn’t you just tell me?

Hello, I’m glad I wasn’t late today. And then we begin again, again.
For the day cannot break without me paying the usual toll:
The willpower required to unearth myself from these cotton bedsheets,
The mechanics laying underneath my arm to lift this red plastic toothbrush,
The thousands of hours of labour that allowed this cereal to go
from rural farmfields to this urban decay.
The quaint characteristics of trying to figure out today’s newspaper
with ten-thousand serif words spilling bad news that’s yet to come.

It begins with the apples, first light then heavy—
budding greens slowly becoming hardened reds.
Drooping the busy branches of many autumn trees
who have yellowed and oranged their way towards asleep.

(A sunset will never look as good in a photograph as it does in real life. And yet, a sunset will never stop being photographed by people — until it stops setting. That’s how I go about writing her.)

As a freelance writer, it can be easy to think only in the short-term — Start utilizing a calendar the way big-name publishers do in order to consistently produce high-quality content for a more engaged audience!

The craft of writing, detailing how exactly to go from a simple and disorderly idea to a completed and coherent piece. here are many steps to this process — from brainstorms to an outline, from drafting to revisions, until you have something publishable. Writing is a mysterious and elusive artform. Whether it’s technical, creative, or copy — good writing contains something that cannot be taught.