Writer's Excerpts

Metropolis Redux

by Rishma Dunlop

published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto - Book 6

The city sometimes forgets where she lives. The streets are confused. Air of cinders and flowers, the nerves of the boulevards on edge. Parks desert themselves. The address of her future uncertain.

She grabs for the world, tenants a coach house among restored Victorians, rose gardens and fountains. Brick walls dream of hay and horses, the scent of leather harnesses, ghosts tangled in their tethers. The soiled gloves of the coachman, carriage of sleep. A lost earring, a midnight slipper.

Outside her bedroom, graffiti across the road reads:

Tom Hendry is a rat

Testified against his older brother for murder

Full moon pinned between skyscrapers, the alley becomes a night-river of smashed beer bottles, obscenities screamed by crack dealers and drunks.

To read the full piece, purchase TOK: Writing the New Toronto - Book 6