Steve Ambrose Makes a Knife
by James Hawes
Steve Ambrose likes to watch YouTube videos of people making knives.
Steve Ambrose is lonely.
Steve Ambrose’s loneliness has nothing to do with his watching of people making knives on YouTube.
Steve Ambrose’s brother got him into them and his brother is far from lonely.
Steve Ambrose melts a collection of old drill bits in his toaster oven.
Steve Ambrose watches the director’s cut of The Wild Geese waiting for the drill bits to melt.
Steve Ambrose realizes that in the director’s cut there is a previously deleted scene in which Richard Harris’s character appears in drag, and Roger Moore’s character doesn’t recognize him.
Steve Ambrose realizes it is hard to tell whether his brother is lonely or not.
Steve Ambrose watches Richard Harris and Roger Moore dance the Lindy Hop.
Steve Ambrose takes his dog for a walk when the film is over, the Lindy Hop scene sticks out in his brain like a mishammered nail.
Steve Ambrose checks the toaster oven to see if the drill bits have melted. They are glowing orange and bubbling.
Steve Ambrose constructs a mold for the steel out of a three pack of Play-Doh.
Steve Ambrose smells the Play-Doh and tries to remember a girl with black hair he chased around the playground in the first grade.
Steve Ambrose appreciates the way the primary colours of the Play-Doh dissolve and swirl into each other.
Steve Ambrose smacks a mosquito that was pulling some blood from his neck.
Steve Ambrose imagines Richard Burton watching the Lindy Hop scene during dailies and secretly hoping the scene makes the final cut.
The girl’s name was Gabriella, Gabriella L-something.
Steve Ambrose places the squashed mosquito into the Play-Doh mold and pours the melted drill bits over it.
Steve Ambrose pulls the newly formed knife blade from the mold with a pair of salad tongs and dunks it in a dirty pot of oil.
Steve Ambrose makes himself a turkey sandwich while the steel cools.
Steve Ambrose files the edge of his knife for seven hours.
Steve Ambrose fashions a handle for his new knife from his brother’s wooden leg.
Steve Ambrose feels the weight of his new knife and goes out to buy tomatoes.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Photo credit: Judi Edmison
James Hawes is a Montreal poet, publisher and filmmaker. His first full-length poetry collection Breakfast with a Heron (Mansfield, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 ReLit award. He has published four chapbooks; Bus Metro Walk (Monk Press, 2018), The Hotdog Variations (above/ground, 2020), under an overpass, a fox (2022) and This Inhabited Object (2025) under his own micro-press, Turret House.
Website: turrethousepress.ca
Instagram: @james4j