Photo by Gustavo Espinola
It’s hard to believe that Trevor Corkum actually sleeps. He’s completing the first year of his PhD in Adult Education; just took part in the Fables for the 21st Century program at Banff; regularly interviews authors for the 49th Shelf; writes reviews and articles for national periodicals; and even runs his own business, One Life Writing. He also runs yoga and writing retreats on Wolfe Island. His writing has been recognized with nominations for the Journey Prize, a National Magazine Award for Fiction, a Western Magazine Award for Personal Journalism, and both the CBC Short Story Prize and CBC Creative Nonfiction Prizes. Most exciting of all, his novel, The Electric Boy, is forthcoming with Doubleday Canada.
Excerpt from “Dar a Luz”
From the glorious heavens, above the patter and chaos, this is how the city appears.
Like a mirage. Like something from a bad man’s dream.
From the air, the palm-tree island bleeds like a gash across the hypnotic blue face of the Gulf, each massive frond protruding into the sea on its own concrete curlicue. On the island, in unnumbered crescents, the mansions and manicured villas and heavily fortified townhouses of the Russian Mafioso and tax-dodging European football stars and faded Hollywood glamour queens line themselves up one glittering pool after another, the shimmer of backyard fountains, the gardens of Porsches and Bentleys, everything strung together like a rope of glitzy jewels.
Further back on the mainland, hugging the central shoreline, a phalanx of glass towers soar from the dust, crowding out the city’s business core and the faceless tourist badlands fronting the packed marina. They huddle together like men at a sleazy bachelor party, loud and unapologetic, taking up too much space. Sun glints from their muscular walls in the savage desert light. Helicopters zip from rooftop to rooftop, buzzing and flitting about like bloated flies. The Babel-like monstrosity of the World’s Tallest Building— supported by petrol blood money—juts at an awkward angle from the hip of the arterial highway. An opulent sail-shaped hotel written up in the leading travel rags occupies its own stark isle. Even the seagulls above the metropolis seem contrived, soaring across the horizon like they’ve been Photo-shopped onto a poster in the drab suburbs of Delhi or Beijing.
The temperature on the ground hovers in the vicinity of 45 degrees.
Everywhere—in any direction—the smog and maddening traffic and the bruised, encrusted canals that rot like weak veins in the stinking legs of a corpse.
“Dar a Luz” was first published by Event magazine (2016).
(written by Trevor Corkum, read by Chioke I'Anson)
That rad music you hear at the end is by Tigerrosa. Buy their debut album here
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