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.
Once they were girls who waited
behind counters, stacking custard tarts
& bacalhau fritters in Portuguese bakeries,
hanging up aprons to smoke on the stoops
of the Women’s Centre and Payday Loans . . .
Book 6
On a Night Like This
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. It was Cyril’s night off. He felt tight as a drum. Uncontainable. He needed to run, or to walk for miles, but the rain didn’t stop. Cyril was painfully homesick and missed his mother with a longing that made him hollow. She was un-reclaimable, passed on forever, and Cyril had never been able to satisfy himself as to the where. But if he could be home right now, in the Jamaican sunshine on his way to Brown’s Town walking by fields of yam and cabbage, or under a moon with the tree frogs singing, then heaven might seem a possibility.
So along with his sunken spirit came anger. Because Cyril was pissed at everything that had got him to this cold wet town where he knew barely anyone even though he worked at two jobs and still got his assignments in on time.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 6. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Toronto locations referenced in this piece
Bella turned left through the rain-blur of green traffic light onto Dundas. I wonder where she’s got the cookies stowed, thought Bella. —Dundas
“Where are you from? ” asked the first cop. “Near Bathurst and Queen.” “I mean your accent, buddy. Where do you come from? ” —Bathurst and Queen
That Question: Notes Toward a Poetics of Truth
The door slams—she
The door slams—she cannot
The door slams—she cannot remember
The door slams and she stumbles down the steps
in a t-shirt, nothing else.
Blood footprints follow her.
The door slams and she manages to get out
but where are her shoes?
her underwear?
She wouldn’t fuck him
Stop it
Her clothes are in the house
Stop it
Her washing machine photographs cutlery
are in the house also
Everything she owns
lives in the house . . .
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 6. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
For Jackson and the Chase
“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. This is how Jackson taught me the necessary escape from the past by facing it down.
In the kitchen steaming with heat, working as dishwashers and short-order cooks, we leaned into memories. Both of us another Angelus Novus, in obligatory hairnets and knee-length aprons stained to a fade, tucked over tank tops and old jeans, bare feet in our fluorescent sneakers from BiWay or Thrifty’s, squealing across the linoleum floor, then a year later, tougher, lace-up combat boots, worn even in summertime.
“Like a fucking sauna.” The first thing Jackson ever said to me, as she wiped the wet edge of her face and jerked a thumb toward the end of the kitchen facing out on a crumbling parking lot behind Yonge Street. “Even with that back door propped open.”
I watched the manager look me up and down as he hired me.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 6. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Toronto locations referenced in this piece
“I didn’t know the difference. High school was it for me, but now Jackson had me dreaming wild about going to chef school at George Brown College . . . ” —George Brown College Chef School
“‘Like a fucking sauna.’ The first thing Jackson ever said to me, as she wiped the wet edge of her face and jerked a thumb toward the end of the kitchen facing out on a crumbling parking lot behind Yonge Street. ‘Even with that back door propped open.’ . . . ” —Yonge Street
Personal Treasures
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. So I moved to the tenements on Jameson. It will be at least a couple of years before they convert this stretch of street into a place with class. But I don’t have years to wait.
The construction to eliminate the Dufferin Jog has restarted. It was dormant for so long that I had been simply going about my business. Now that the machines are in motion, my business is to rescue my belongings from the path of excavation and move to a different part of town.
I do not want to go up to Jane and Finch. It’s so far away from everything.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 6. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Toronto locations referenced in this piece
“So I moved to the tenements on Jameson. It will be at least a couple of years before they convert this stretch of street into a place with class . . . ” —Jameson Avenue
“I will barely exist in one of those highrise low-rent buildings. I must have a sentimental attachment to the West End. But the West is not my kind of neighbourhood anymore. I’ve been here so long that I’m no longer blending in with the scenery . . . ” —Parkdale
“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 . . . ” —Queen Street West
“I do not want to go up to Jane and Finch. It’s so far away from everything. I expect there would be no people on the street at night that far north. So I explored the parts of downtown that are still considered bad neighbourhoods . . . ” —Jane and Finch
“Just south of there, Sherbourne and Queen is still pretty rough but it’s hemmed in on all sides by antique shops and brunch places and homes that people actually own. It won’t last long . . . ” —Sherbourne and Queen
the inviolable heart
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. Its feathers are fluffed, eyes half-shut, wings droopy with exhaustion. The unfamiliar stillness scares me more than the constant fluttering. Breathing becomes difficult. My lungs spasm and squeeze the bird between sinew and flesh. Its beak lacerates muscle tissue. A tiny stream of blood spreads over its yellow crown of feathers. My wounds heal but the bird never moves again.
A month later my family leaves the Philippines in a silver jet plane to immigrate to the province of Ontario in Canada. I imagine that the x-ray machines at the airport will reveal my secret but the tall white man at the border just smiles and allows us into this strange new country.
I am now an adult and I do not know if the bird is sleeping, dead or paralyzed with fear. When I die, please remove it from my chest.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 6. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Toronto locations referenced in this piece
“Such elegant street names to camouflage the poverty and racial conflict that came with living in the Malvern Jungle . . . ” —Malvern Jungle