Jason Heroux
$6
1. I am speaking now from a Dollar Store within a mall in Kingston, Ontario where I live a quiet, simple life as a notebook. 100 pages. College ruled. White paper. 3-hole punched. Originally manufactured by ACCO Brands in Brooklyn, New York, USA, I currently reside in the stationary aisle among a diverse range of notebooks. Surrounded by pens, erasers, liquid paper bottles, markers, stickers, other school supplies. I’ve spent years here. Saw a lot of nearby products grow old, lose their abilities, expire, get tossed aside. Their spirits are still on the shelves. Somehow I never expired. Where’s my spirit?
2. Business is quiet. There seems to be less and less customers these days. A rumour is circulating that the mall is scheduled to shut down, get demolished. A spider overheard the property manager talking on the phone to his brother. “It’s happening.” Yesterday two ghosts wandered along the aisle. The child ghost raised a hand and pointed at me. “A note boat.” The mother ghost laughed, and corrected the child. “No, it’s called a notebook.” But I prefer the term note-boat over notebook. I am a vessel, far off at sea, carrying my blank pages to the nearest shore.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
as the thirty-first title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
September 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Jason Heroux is a person of some sort, although this has yet to be verified.
This is Heroux's third above/ground press chapbook, after Something or Other (2023) and A Further Introduction to Bingo, with Dag T. Straumsvåg (2024).
To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com
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