The Grimoire

First four pages of the Grimoire’s One Year Anniversary. 

Friendly reminder that this is on Friday! 

Last call: October 20! This Thursday! 

Theme: sex, blood, fire 

Get us your stories, art, poetry, lists, rants, text message history with that one asshole, found poetry from text message history with that one asshole, recipes, curses, hexes, self care advice, how-to’s, quizes etc. etc. etc. to [email protected]

This October we bring you our best Zine yet filled with glorious sex, blood and fire. Because what better way to ring in another Halloween weekend than with your favourite witches and a zine filled with glorious sins? (answer: there isn't a better way) Rough Itenerary: 7pm gather at Belljar 8pm Readings 8:30 - ?? dance, hang, do spells, summon Lucifer Costumes highly encouraged but not mandatory. Feel free to invite any and all friends, relatives, lovers, lovers' friends and relatives, relatives' friends and lovers, friends' lovers and relatives...I'm running out of combinations. All are welcome!

Location:  Belljar Cafe/Bar 2072 Dundas West, Toronto, Ontario M6R 1W9

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Grimoire Submissions are open! 

Theme: Sex. Blood. Fire. 

We accept art, poetry, prose, lists, open letters, comics, rants, stream of consciousness, photography etc. etc. So long as it is 2D and shows up well in black and white. 

Submit to: [email protected]

This October will be our one year anniversary of the Grimoire! This is very exiciting! 

For this edition our theme is Sex. 

As vague as you want, as literal as you want, as happy as you want, as sad, as angry, as sexy, as bad, as good, as metaphorical, as symbolic, as whatever and however you want! Woo!

Suggested additions/things to run with to the theme: blood. fire. 

We accept: poetry, prose, art, comics, photography, lists, thought pieces, open letters, satire, etc. 

Send stuff to: [email protected]

Submission guide: Found Here

Past issues: In our tag list

“It’s toxic, but terrific,” he says with a grin and ushers you into his store.

He’s holding a cane, and calling your name. He has a special. It’s perfect for you. His head is capped with an ostentatious hat. It’s purple and green and blue.

“Welcome to the boutique! The prices aren’t cheap, but I promise, we carry only the finest.”

Neon signs all around leave you spellbound, these gleaming promises of pleasure and pain. For your nipples! For your dick! For your pussy! High tech gadgets glitter purple and pink: for her, for him, to stimulate the heart, soul, and clit.

“Ah, she’s a beaut,” he laughs with a hoot, noticing your gaze linger on a leggy brunette.

God, this one’s so tall and thin.

—Your pillows didn't smell like you they smell like my hair now and your sheets didn't smell like you and they smell like my skin now—

I want you to slide through my fingers—paper thin paper cuts as trails those long thin red trails kids leave on their legs when they scratch mosquito bites other itches red bugs on legs you crush them under your finger they are orange now smears on your fingers. Paper cuts paper thin I want to trace them later I want to finger them later I want to write lines, trails of words, later Finger those trails of words like I fingered you before I left screaming in my head because I'm always screaming in my head and in my blood and in my heart and my legs when they move are screaming I can't. I cannot with you. 

Because I am sick because I am a coward because I am a fool who is difficult and at night there's wind in my head so I do not sleep. My hands twitch and legs hurt from screaming all day but I cannot sleep there are probably ocean waves in my heart for how it works and works and works and works when it should be calm. calm. breath in. calm. 

I cannot. With you. Because I will not with you. Because I do not with anyone. So, it isn't your fault, but I was born in the middle of two people self-destructing in the centre of a summer street, a windy street sometime around midnight and it took seven hours. Which means that I can see ghosts. And I can see you. And you are a ghost eating me. Sitting on my chest gumming me. Licking slurping me your teeth are chalk white and they make my lungs feel like ash as you eat eat eat me Chewing my bones like a hyena, like a jackal crunching through them an omnivorous bear sucking through them. I cannot get my head to work and my heart needs to not be the ocean in the middle of the night and I see ghosts and I am scared of you and scared of me and the wind and the bear-ghosts, fucking ghosts, and the fingers fingering fingers. So - no just stop. Run away first. Go on, I dare you. Jump first. I'll hold your hand. Jump jump jump jump first. Or I'll do it. And I'll wake shaking or something dreaming or something. Ripping myself tearing myself eating myself fingering myself because I am sick. because I am cowardly. 

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Go back over ten years: I am in high school, a wishful punk kid with an awful haircut. I am waiting in the music hallway of the school and flipping through sheet music in preparation for a performance that I am about to do. The memory is fuzzy, like staring through a dirty screen window. There were other people there, five or six or ten, all dusty shadows, but I remember one. He was short and bespectacled and had soft orange hair, like Hi-C or off-brand Kool-Aid. We are not friends. He says something to me, something that now buzzes in my head, reduced to static in my memories. I don’t remember how I respond. He is getting mad, I am staying where I am. He stares at me, inches below my eye line, and goes, “Fuck you, faggot.”

I say something back — again, static from a signal I can’t really reach anymore.

“You FAGGOT,” he says back. It is not the first time he has called me this in anger. This is what I can clearly remember: I grab him by the neck and slam him into the locker door. I am young and my anger at the world is raw and slippery, the swimming school of fish that is the frustration and constantly moving rage of teenagers across the world. I tell him to fuck off. He is heavier than me, but I am stronger. I hold him by his throat for a second too long and let go. He never speaks to me again. These are not good actions; they are the actions born of frustration, of fear and pointless youthful anger, of ignorance and annoyance and the sudden overwhelming desire to hurt someone because you feel they have wronged you. The only reason society basically exists is that we don’t all give into those urges, the ones that tell you to shove the slow walker in your way or to sucker punch your mouthy coworker or to crush the windpipe of the underclassman who is trying to hurt you, one way or another. My actions back then were not smart, nor should I have done them. You take those moments where you respond to assholes like an asshole and try to learn, something, anything.

I am older now. I am smarter, I can use my words, and I am tired.