Summer 2026, Volume 47, No. 2

$14.95

Cover photo by Tétro Design

MRB Fiction Contest Winners
Annick MacAskill
Anne Baldo

MRB Poetry Contest Winners
Sean Howard
Pamela Dillon

MRB Creative Non-Fiction Winners
Ken Wilson
Rowan McCandless

Fiction
Darry Dinnell
Helen Georgas

Poetry
Dee Hobsbawn-Smith
Anna Mark
Teresa Ott
Melanie Power
Shannon Quinn
Tazi Rodrigues

Creative Non-Fiction
Martha Grace Duncan

Fiction Preview

With Friends by Annick MacAskill

Anna’s plan is going to work. Her mother is a lopsided snail on the couch, a heap of dirty laundry unto herself, all sweats and stained Muskoka tee, empty Coors Light cans at her feet in a row, tidier than she is. Eloise sold the station wagon last year, too broke to pay for new winter tires. But she still has her phone, and on her phone, the Uber app, one she’s used on occasion to take Anna clothes shopping in Sarnia.

Anna’s not going to Sarnia this time. Saturday night, a week before grad, she’s headed all the way to London for a concert in the east end, an area she blurrily remembers visiting a handful of times, back when her father still came to collect her for the occasional weekend visit.

This trip has nothing to do with her father. It also has nothing to do with Armon, her fresh ex-boyfriend, or Tia, her technically-still-going best friend. Maybe Tia is just as guilty as Armon for what happened, but Anna would never ditch a girlfriend the way she would a guy. She has her principles.

Humming under her breath, she squints at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, holds her right eyelid closed with her ring finger to apply a thick layer of shimmery lilac eyeshadow. The makeup also belongs to Anna’s mother.

If Eloise wakes up before Anna gets home (a big if, given her history), well… Anna hasn’t thought that part through yet. But she’ll get her pay from Tim Hortons on Thursday, more than enough tocover the cost of the Uber. $100 for the 66-minute drive to the Lower Side, the bar where Collins Martin is playing tonight. $100 for the base fare (she checked this weeks ago), some taxes, she knows, plus a $10 tip—$125 max, she figures. She can afford that. She doesn’t plan on needing an Uber back, because some kids from school are sure to be there, and someone will take pity and offer her a ride home—that much she can count on.

After all, it’s through kids from school that Anna found out about Collins Martin in the first place. Up late one night scrolling on her phone, she discovered the With Friends feature on Instagram—click on it and be transported to a portal of reels liked by a random assortment of your contacts.

Collins Martin looked like a group out of her mother’s early aughts past, but cooler—torn plaid shirts, torn jeans, shaggy hair and eyeliner. Their lyrics sank into her bones the way Taylor Swift’s had when she was a tween. Mo, Jerry and Ben—and of course Ben was her favourite, the lead singer who shone like his own spotlight in the interviews the band posted to their accounts.

Collins Martin was based in Kingston, so Anna hadn’t given much thought to the possibility of ever meeting them live. Instead, she downloaded their music on Spotify, playing favourites—“Albatross Girl,” “French Fries for Dinner,” and “Lonely Lovely Ladybug”—on repeat as she washed the dishes or picked up her mother’s refundables. Sensations she had experienced for years were now pinned down for her, transliterated by their lyrics, the words and music kissing her eardrums. What it meant to feel like you were going to burst out of your skin if you didn’t leave soon. How the touch of grass on your feet made you forget where you were. What it might be like to finally run run run away. …(See issue for full story!)

 

Creative Non-Fiction Preview

A Touch of Madness by Martha Grace Duncan

“It was a terrible, terrible time,” my mother said, “when Daddy thought he was sick in Minnesota.” Enveloped in her warm blue robe, she stood at the kitchen stove, boiling water for coffee, while I sat at the table waiting for my oatmeal to cook. I had flown home the day before to spend Christmas with my family in Santa Barbara. With no one else awake, I had taken advantage of the time alone with my mother to ask my enduring question: what happened to my father during our last year in Saint Paul?

Knowing how she hated to remember the bad times, I felt guilty, but this morning she hadn’t pushed my question away. “Not long after he went AWOL in New York,” she said, “he went on a field trip with 3M and brought back some liquid that would turn into foam and harden.”

She wrinkled her nose, poured her coffee, and suggested we move into the dining room to eat our breakfast. On the scalloped mahogany table, she had set out white ceramic cherubs, each holding a red candle, with a bowl of poinsettias between them. Evidently, she had been wrapping presents the day before, because remnants of red ribbon and silver reindeer-themed paper littered the table. I quickly swept the debris to one side with my hand, and we sat down near the sliding glass doors.

“His boss had been trying to interest him in something besides the Magic Bow Machine,” my mother said. “They wanted him to work on a problem involving railroad trains. There’s a place above each boxcar wheel where a lubricant drips onto the axle. If the lubricant leaks or runs dry, the axle bearing can overheat and catch fire.”

I couldn’t quite picture it, so I got up to fetch a World Book from the living room shelves. We had the 1953 set, with rough red and blue covers, which my mother had bought “used” after placing a want ad in the paper. She was resourceful that way.

“3M had tried using ‘waste,’” she said.

“Waste?” By now, I had found a diagram of a boxcar in the “R” volume. It showed an axle bearing but nothing called “waste.”

“Strips of spongy gauze—a byproduct of their ribbon-making process.” She took a sip of her coffee. “They saturated the waste with a lubricant, but it didn’t work too well.”

I couldn’t imagine my father being interested in something so prosaic. His most successful invention was the Magic Bow Machine, the first machine to make those pompom bows with all the loops that you see on Christmas and birthday presents. He invented it while working in New York City as a ribbon salesman for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (3M).

Although better known today for its utilitarian and industrial products, such as Scotch tape, sandpaper, Post-it notes, and surgical face masks, 3M also used to make ribbon. It did so for about half a century, beginning in the years immediately following World War II and continuing until 1998. In that last year, ribbon, which had always been a minor player, a poor cousin to tape, and often in danger of expiring, finally ceased to be manufactured at 3M.

My father is credited with saving the Ribbon Division, for a time, in the early nineteen-fifties. Hoping to sell more of its unique, lustrous ribbon, the Company had created the “Magic Bow.” But unfortunately, it had to be made by hand, which required dexterity lacking in most department store clerks. They needed a mechanical device to make the Magic Bow—something 3M had been trying to design for twenty-five years. My father had done it on his own time, in his own garage. ...(See issue for full story!)

Poetry Preview

Knife Edge by Dee Hobsbawn-Smith

I’m facing the restful silence of my butcher’s block
as if it was the executioner,
rhubarb sticking to my knife,
long strands of red clinging like desperation,
my good intentions outmuscled by sharp truths.

I’m in the kitchen more than usual these days,
avoiding the scrawled draft waiting in my notebook,
afraid I will be revealed
as a poet dealing in trite and terrible truths I cannot change.

I don’t know how to address this
no matter how hard I practise avoidance. But the crisp emerges
from the oven, butterfly from chrysalis,
sour chunks of hard fruit converted into lusciousness,
rosy bubbles along its edges,
as gorgeous as the satin scarf Dad gave me. … (see issue for full poem!)

Summer 2026, Volume 47, No. 2 quantity

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