Plenitude magazine is co-presenting this month’s Queer Night at the Brockton Writers Series on Wednesday, July 13, 2016 at  full of beans Coffee House & Roastery, 1348 Dundas St. W., Toronto (6:30pm, PWYC)âfeaturing Matt Loney, Gwen Benaway, Kumasi Jay Gwynne, Yaya Yao and a special guest talk by Plenitude reviews editor Rachna Contractor!
by Matthew R. Loney
âA glorious June: I go outside to sunbathe on the blanket I lifted from Turkish Airlines the summer I spent a month in Istanbul.
â”Pride Flag Flies On Parliament Hill For The First Timeâ
âPhoto caption: Wall Street Journal â âA Palestinian boy riding a bike during sunset at Al Khalde mosque, Gaza Strip, on the eve of Ramadan, which starts June 6, 2016.â
âI had mistaken the old man for a vagrant, had judged his apparent shabbiness: âDid you guys hear about Florida?â he calls to us as he wobbles by on his bicycle. âHorrible, that stuff.â âA tragedy,â we exchange. âYou boys have a safe day.â Sunday morning, we are headed to the beach.
âThat same summer in 2014, I stopped over in Tel Aviv. Their Pride had just finished; the Israeli military push into the Gaza Strip had restarted. When one afternoon, as it had each prior, the air-raid sirens lifted and fell across the city, I gathered this same airline blanket from the sand and ran to take shelter. Rockets incoming.
âThe pound sterling nosedives to 31-year lows.
â”They took shelter in a bathroom stall with other club-goers, which the shooter later entered.â
âI consider whether Empire crumbles or just falls dormant.
âRereading his email, I respond to a friend working for the United Nations in South Sudan. I investigate the strange feeling his stories give me, the tragedies of faraway places, of shared terror. Over there, there are child soldiers. There are mining and oil-field playgrounds of international interest. There are mass graves and reports of forced cannibalism. His email boils down to a phrase: âI donât understand the hatred.â
âMy phone vibrates: âTurkey blames Daesh for Istanbul airport blast that killed 41â
âIs my smartphone just a megaphone for Empire?
ââApparently using his smartphone, Omar Mateen searched on Facebook for âPulse Orlandoâ and âshootingâ during his three-hour early morning attack…â
âMy partner finally blocks his Evangelical sister on Facebook. He wonât repent; he cannot. We are not an abomination.
âHow do you suntan in a warzone?
â”He pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.â
âIs my smartphone just a megaphone for Caliphate?
âI met my partner on Facebook.
âFear and hatred. The confluence is elementary: I fear therefore I hate.
âWe were helpless in our hotel room; the Iron Dome celebrated its interception in the blue sky outside. The thunderous explosions rattled the glass in their panes.
âWhat is it that wants to kill me? Who wants me dead? Where does my vote weigh in the tipping point between surrender and resistance?
ââThe Union Jack and Rainbow Flag at half-mast as Redditch remembers victims of Orlando slaughterâ
âThe Roman Empire fell. The Ottoman Empire fell.
ââThe Union Jack hoisted on one of the 28 flagpoles outside the European Commission building might as well have been flying at half-staff….â
ââA prominent Italian historian has claimed that the Roman Empire collapsed because a âcontagion of homosexuality and effeminacyâ made it easy pickings for barbarian hordes.â
âThe sight of two men kissing angered him. Barbarian.
â”I was kissing my boyfriend goodbye when I heard the first shots…â
âIn Europe, the police sirens sound different.
ââA Man With âArsenalâ Arrested Near L.A. Pride Festivalâ
âIn South Sudan, there are no sirens.
âThe precipitate of hate is courage: #twomenkissing
â”There are no significant festivals in South Sudan during the month of Juneâ the tourist board would say if it existed.
âA crescent moon lifts behind the rainbow-coloured CN Tower.
ââTurkish police fire tear gas in Istanbul to disperse Gay Pride activistsâ
âNearly each morning this month, one might say religiously, the straight couple in the condo across from ours fucks, unabashed, in full view.
END
Matthew R. Loney is the author of That Savage Water (Exile Editions, 2014)âa collection of backpacker-themed short fiction. He was a finalist for the 2013 and 2014 Gloria Vanderbilt Short Fiction Award and his work has appeared in a range of North American publications, including instalments Three and Four of the Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Anthology Series and the political short fiction anthology Everything Is So Political. His book reviews have appeared in the Puritan, the Maple Tree Literary Supplement, and Broken Pencil. He lives in Toronto.