When I was a journalism student at Carleton University, the big media outlets would come around once a year to conduct job interviews. A famous interviewer tactic was to ask the interviewee to look out the window and name five ideas for news stories . . .
Tell us about yourself.
I was born and raised in Toronto’s Polish community on Roncesvalles Avenue, studied Journalism and English at Carleton University, spent eight or nine years after that working odd jobs, doing bits of theatre and freelance journalism . . .
If you’re not careful, too much
pomelo will give you the runs, but
the leaves of the tree make
the sweetest tea.
The day before you want to
drink, cut
leaves from the tree. Dry them
on the roof, under sun . . .
Tell us about yourself.
I love to laugh very loud. Crying comes easily too. I love to tell stories, through words, movement, music, theatre, and best of all (and most natural to us as humans I think) through a mix of all that and more . . .
My grandfather’s garage smells like him. Like oil and gasoline and cut grass and cologne. No one who wears cologne has been in that garage for ages, years, probably. But it still smells like that to me . . .
I remember when he left: I was watching TV—Batman and Robin—in black and white. It was 1967, Brooklyn, New York. I was sitting on the rug between the TV and the couch. My little sister, Meshach, was in my lap, and my newborn baby brother, Abednego, in his bassinet, was beside me . . .
Bead
Spring cleaning
My room in Scarborough.
Object: jade bracelet,
rice-like bead linked to rice-like bead linked
to rice-like bead linked to . . .
Mine.
In a shoebox of memories,
In a zippered embroidered pouch,
A gift my mom left for me . . .
A tree’s dark leaves explode
to black-wing squadrons in the sky
like an airburst lifting all the heavy fruit
away.
More and more I’m seeing
hydras in the green world.
I know alchemy in the pot and it’s not
gold, it’s green and grey matter—
smoke curled fiddlehead in the fire
of a synapse . . .
I hold this splendid dark night in my hand
Inward gratefully it’s a lovely night
Dark nights like great hideaways
Dark nights like a safe haven
Dark nights like a safe time to take a flight
Dark nights like a sacrament in my hand
. . .
