TOK: Writing the New Toronto - Book 6
In the sixth installment of the TOK series you will find a Toronto born anew. The contributors in TOK 6 bring fresh eyes to neighbourhoods you may have walked through a thousand times, or reprise a Toronto of time gone past. You may recognize its torched buildings, back alleyways or TTC stations, or not--but you will recognize the truth in the human experiences they portray. TOK 6 features Karen Connelly, Rishma Dunlop, David Layton, Martin Mordecai plus 15 emerging writers.
Published by Zephyr Press
Excerpts from TOK: Writing the New Toronto - Book 6
November rain, the beginning of winter and the last leaves trampled into a dense, wet mat of browns. The sky had been a thick sheet of grey for three days so rain was almost a relief, although it now felt as though it would last for weeks.
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.
Gracie stands at the window, arms akimbo, and looks through her reflection to the front lawn. In her transparent body, grass sprouts where her heart should be. It’s patchy. Choked with weeds.
Vincent walked to the back of the plane, to the very back where the seats didn’t properly recline, took his place by the window and hoped without much conviction that the two empty seats beside him would remain that way. Flight 966 left Toronto for Barbados every morning and it always seemed to be full.
What sight could prepare us for / our children failing? / New mothers / flutter past meat markets on Bloor, / their mascara thick as lace, looking past / pensioners puffing by the sports café, / Eritrean men and their talk of progress ...
Lily doesn’t consider herself religious, but when her mother’s illness overwhelms her, she goes to Holy Martyrs. They have the best music of all the churches in Toronto’s west end. None of that modern stuff; it’s traditional all the way.
Mr. V.K. Goswami was quite alone since his orange calico died the previous year. His studio apartment, though small and cluttered, felt vacant without her. He did sometimes think of taking a streetcar to the Toronto Humane Society, but on reflection decided another cat could never replace this particular calico.
Whenever Belle walked along Spadina, the shopkeepers would leap from the comfort of their worn stools to offer her the juiciest orange or the most luscious square of strawberry cheesecake. Schwartz, who owned the lady’s apparel store, would attempt to lure her into his premises by showing off his most glamorous red frock.
Eye use 2 dream in colour / Prisms of inner eagle visions // Pastel spring High Park bloom colour / Rich velveteen Rouge Valley autumn colour / Feathers of winged ones ...
Mira stared and stared at her iPhone, her sweaty thumb digging into the touchscreen just below the stored text message. A victim of an “e-breakup,” she could no longer regard the phenomenon as an urban legend. Such things really do happen to adults over thirty in monogamous relationships.
It was a glimpse. A shadow across a busy midday street disappearing through a doorway into darkness. But twenty yards further up, in front of the No Frills he’d been heading to, Gladwyn is sure. The cards of memory are shuffled and dealt like flashes of light, and he’s certain.
Aroused by possibility / My fingers tilt to form a magic frame // And suddenly we are not at Mel’s all night Montreal deli in Toronto ...
Freda blows back into town on a Sunday. Annie is facing away from the counter when the door opens, her sleeves rolled up, elbow deep in a batch of chilled coffee mix. She’s concentrating on stirring steadily, with enough force to dissolve the sugar but not enough to take it over the edge.
Stephanie struggled to shove her feet into red stilettos outside the cheap-looking door she’d just closed. As her foot found its nook, toes reassuringly squeezed by reinforced satin, she thought she could hear the man on the other side of the door, just barely audible: “Fucking squaw bitch.”
Snazzy pauses at the corner of a brick building at the edge of Moss Park. The ground reeks of pee and puke. Looking upward, she sees the tip of the steeple on the old stone church.
It is my fifth birthday and I become aware. A canary is trapped inside my chest cavity. Its claws cannot grip the slippery bones of my rib cage. It flies in circles searching for a safe place to rest. It finally perches on the conical pouch that forms the left ventricle of my heart.
I have to move. I have to move both myself and my treasure chest out of Parkdale. I knew my time here was limited: I knew it the first time I saw a café where a cup of coffee cost over two dollars; I knew it when the condominiums started going up. My last apartment was going to be renovated when they turned the dive bar below it into a swanky lounge. It must rent now for twice as much as I paid, as it’s right on Queen.
“The trick,” she told me, “is to always keep moving. And if you do look back, for whatever reason, be ready for the commotion.” When no one else was watching we covered our ears with our hands, elbows angled outward as if to ward off double-fisted blows, keeping our eyes wide open.
The door slams—she / The door slams—she cannot / The door slams—she cannot remember / The door slams and she stumbles down the steps...
