Diaspora Dialogues

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excerpt

The Tangerine Conundrum

by

It was when JD suffered a second stroke that matters came to a head in the Meerchand household. There was no way Birla could continue nursing him around the clock when she was getting frail herself. He would have to go into a nursing home.

The problem was that JD refused to go unless Birla accompanied him. Birla suspected it was a point of honour for JD to have her, his wife, accompany him to what would probably be his last repository.

Anjali, their daughter, visited several nursing homes. After long discussions with the administrator about the need for both her parents to enter the facility together, she selected the Fern Hill Long Term Care Facility in Leaside. It was housed in a modern building, adjoining a small park. On the warm April day when Anjali first visited Fern Hill, a few of its occupants were being walked or wheeled around the park by attendants in blue-grey uniforms. She tried to picture her father in one of the wheelchairs, hopefully with Birla wheeling him. It looked like a happy enough sort of place, with daffodils pushing their irrepressible cheer through the earth all over the park. Inside, lunch was being served in a light-filled dining room, with a pervading smell of boiled cabbage. Anjali resolved to bring in tiffins of curry and dhal.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 3. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“After long discussions with the administrator about the need for both her parents to enter the facility together, she selected the Fern Hill Long Term Care Facility in Leaside . . . ” —Leaside

“After all, the efficient-looking nursing home was a step up from the dingy apartment they lived in at Dundas and Sherbourne . . . ” —Dundas & Sherbourne

“She took the afternoon off from her job as an archivist at Toronto Reference Library, leaving her with enough time to stop off at the home that she shared with Thomas . . . ” —Toronto Reference Library

If You Only Knew

by

Tony Wong smiled back at the waitress in the doughnut shop, took one final drag of his cigarette, then mashed the butt into the ash tray. He picked up his mug of coffee and gulped down the last mouthful before nodding goodbye to the still smiling waitress. The previous six months of his life had been smoke-free, but now that he was about to start teaching again he had surrendered, lighting up one, just this one to calm my nerves, he had told himself. But one became another and another. He might as well have never stopped. The resumption of his old habit was a mixed blessing. Along with the pleasure, every flick of the lighter pricked a layer of self-loathing that lurked underneath his smooth exterior, this capitulation another sign of weakness. So he reminded himself that once his nerves settled, once he got a handle on things, he would stop for good, this being only a temporary setback. There was nothing to worry about, he told himself. Damn it, he was a seasoned teacher with more than ten years’ experience. It was just that he hadn’t been inside a school since three years ago in Calgary.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 3. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Atlas, Behind the Theatre: Dumpster, Hummingbird Centre

by 

Atlas sits on the loading dock
filled with tatters, stocky, broken,
open topped, the trash within
all that’s known of business past.

Atlas greets the daily traffic
seething past the matinées
saying happiness can be dreamed
after stage and scene are trashed . . .
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 3. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Diaspora

by 

I could lose you, but I haven’t so far.
I might amuse you, but I daren’t, so far.
I could confuse you, but I won’t, so far.
Would I refuse you? No, I say.

I’ve chosen you, yes, this far
from where I was born, faraway
from where I woo you, using my hands

to soothe you, meeting your hands . . .
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 3. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Sides

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She was very pretty, the girl. Pity how thin her lips were. That was Tara’s first impression. The door to the basement opened and for a moment, the dull racket of the party yawned alive. The girl was the first to leave and she did so passing not three feet from Tara’s chair without so much as nodding her head. Tara was sitting in the TV room with a book in her lap, waiting for her son’s party guests to leave so that she could confirm they weren’t inebriated. As for the state of this girl, Tara couldn’t tell—she’d passed by too quickly. By the time Tara closed her book and put down her reading glasses, the chime at the front door had made its tinkle. The girl was gone.

Tara forced her bare feet into a pair of runners, flattening out the backs with her heels. The girl was already halfway up the block, hugging herself although the night was sticky and warm. In the yellow light of the streetlamp, Tara noticed some redness on the backs of her legs. A rash?

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 3. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

To Toronto

by 

I must love you quietly, embarrassed
by your unwieldy desolate sprawl, your cold heart
and shameless lack of fashion sense; deliberately love
what you have cobbled together so carelessly on gridded
streets predictable as a sitcom, the 1980s
a garish tattoo on your nether regions.
(Had you been born beautiful, a sultry New Orleans,
gamine Paris or majestic Damascus; were you known
for romance or elegance, or like Montreal were praised
for joie de vivre . . .
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 3. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“I, at least, am yours, have spent a lifetime learning to know you, skittish mongrel, ambitious tart: I stow my heart in Kensington Market . . . ” —Kensington Ave.

“ . . . beneath the Danforth Bridge, hoping time will treat you kindly and my devotion be not worthless . . . ” —Danforth Bridge

“Eastern Avenue will become a berm, an artificial hill to guard new downtown condos from the Don River’s floods every 150 years . . . ” —Don River

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