Reading Windigo Fire by M. H. Callway is like running from an out of control forest fire while being shot at from an overhead plane. You want to stop the action to take a breather, or at least go the the washroom, but you can’t. Is that an overstatement? It isn’t when you realize that this is exactly what happens to one of the main characters in this fast-pace, heart-racing novel.
by the light of the Windego Moon
While the dodging of bullets is going on, the other main character – a young girl, is fleeing the clutches of a Santa clad drug-lord who wants her to accidentally fall off a cliff before she exposes his plans. No safe place she finds stays safe for long.
we’ll bury the body here
Windigo Fire took me to a northern Ontario I didn’t know existed, perhaps, in fact, it doesn’t, but the writing makes the surreal setting so real as to seem almost a documentary. Vivid, complex, characters that one never really likes but who draw out sympathy any way. Every victory leads disaster till the climax were plot threads are tied tight around the guilty.
is it safe in the trees
Violent without being gory, with characters who pay the price of their actions. Men and women get punched, stabbed, shot and feel the pain, it doesn’t mysterious vanish in the next chapter. At one point, one of our principles thinks “An hour whipped by in five minutes.” That is very true of this book as well. A great read and highly recommended. Available at either Amazon.com or Amazon.ca & http://www.thebookband.com/bookshop/fiction-2/windigo-fire.
We
we were laser Indians
who swam under the bridge
a lost tribe of space rangers
who had to start a fire with stick
children of another time
who fought to feel at home
in this time and place
we found safe places
but they didn’t stay that way
what we found
always brought us back
to the confusion of being
the witch-wound moon-brats
we tried to escape from being
we were TV chefs
stuck on radio shows
there wasn’t a we
it was just one
one child – male
and sometimes even that was a pretence
gender slipped away
as easy as the stars from the sky
as quick as the morning dew
left the garden of grey newspapers
in an empty lot
I pretend to be we
we play the reflection with no mirror
the title fight with no sport
the first cigarette with no one to rebel against
the peek around corners
to make sure there
is no one to make this I a we
I was told
no one wants to play with you
this I who didn’t give a shit
we didn’t care
we were a voiceless choir
singing to the happy congregation
we were tired of the we
we never found the I enough
the we enough
the pretence was never enough
to keep out some pair of eyes
to ask questions
what the fuck are you playing at
get the hell home kid
grow up won’t you
no wonder the other kids won’t hang out with you
just look at you stop being such a cry baby
after a while we didn’t hear
the voices were sound
from a distant fog
we’d say
thank you
fuck you too asshole
why not take a picture
and scamper to find another spot
to set up the empty box moon landing
the box an image on the wall
the wall too high to climb
the wall to the stars
we didn’t care
we
had our laser
light sabre wielding robot
to take care of we
we
blue windigo moose
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TOpoet 