Vientiane, the capital of Laos, is a fading one-time French colonial outpost on a spot where a bend in the Mekong River makes room for a large tear-shaped island directly opposite the centre-ville, which runs only far enough back from the riverbank to allow a few commercial streets. The new bridge to Thailand is a short distance way. Thai-style wats and other temples, minor and major, are everywhere.
After last call at three a.m. the sunon the horizon like a giant lodestarwould guide us over uneven boardwalks and dirt roadstoward the George Black Ferry, acrossthe mud-fed Yukon River to where our hidden worldof tents lay inside a maze of birch,where branches knocked and clacked in the windlike the restless bones of ghosts,where someone always screamed blue murder backat the landlocked sled dogs as they criedand howled at the lingering seasonand stunning lack of darknessinside the night...
Geist is the Canadian magazine of ideas and culture—every issue brings together a sumptuous mix of fact + fiction, photography and comix, poetry, essays and reviews, and more of the weird and wonderful from the world of words.
Geist distills the Canadian imagination into a tactile, stackable, admireable, finishable and entirely shareable magazine.
Notes & Dispatches from ADRIAN RAIN, HOLLIE ADAMS and KATHY PAGE; New fiction by PAUL DHILLON; Feature essay from EMILY LU; Comics by ONJANA YAWNGHWE and YOKO OJI KIKUCHI; Poetry by NOFEL; Winners of the 2023 PolterGeist Writing Contest, and much more!