Ken Sparling
$6
Sitting On A Blue Curbpublished in Ottawa by above/ground press
Me and Kitty were sitting on the sofa trying to decide if this guy in the movie we were watching was hot or not. I paused the movie when Kitty started asking what I thought about this guy. Nowadays, whenever you paused a movie on Netflix, they had this thing where a static ad came onto the screen and stayed there till you unpaused your show. So there was this ad for an insurance company up there and we had to keep unpausing it to see if this guy in the movie was hot. Then we had to re-pause it while we continued our discussion based on what we had seen while the movie was unpaused. The character we were discussing wasn’t the star of the movie, but he had a pretty big role. We’d seen him in other movies, but he looked quite different in this one. His hair was a lot shorter, and he was dressed in period costume. To tell the truth, I thought he was pretty hot, and that is what I told Kitty, but she didn’t agree. “He’s sort of pretty,” she told me, “but I’d never say he was hot.” “What’s the difference between pretty and hot?” I asked her. She looked away from me, back at the tv. “I hate this new thing with the ads when you pause a show,” she said. “Unpause it for a second, would you. I need to look at the guy again.”
as the thirty-second title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
February 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Cover image by Mary Sparling
More Ken Sparling
- Not Anywhere, Just Not (Coach House, 2023)
- the girl arrived (above/ground, 2021)
- This Poem is a House (Coach House, 2016)
Available from the author at dadsayshesawyou@gmail.com:
- Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall
- [untitled novel]
- For Those Whom God Has Blessed With Fingers
- Book
- Intention, Implication, Wind
Online:
kensparling.github.io
instagram: @kensparling
kensparling.ca
This is Sparling's second title with above/ground press, after the girl arrived (2021).
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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