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excerpt
Pack Your Temper
Cut the neck. At least once a week, Pa performed this gesture—a thumb sliced clean across his throat. When drivers cut him off, he would switch lanes, speed up and stare into their car until he got someone’s attention and that person would get a cut-the—neck. In the grocery store, when my older sister and I were lobbing bags of dried lentils at each other, one dose of Pa’s cut-the-neck stopped any further incidents of adolescent insanity. Then there was that stray cat who’d shit all over the dead rose bush. Pa would hide, wait and, when it arrived, shower the animal with Italian profanity before chasing it down the driveway with a cut-the-neck. His gesture became so commonplace to my family that it lost all impact. Not so for outsiders.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 7. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
where you’re going
the path
you have taken:
shanghai to hong kong
hong kong to montreal
montreal to
toronto
parkdale to little portugal
little portugal to university and elm
university and elm to
3 a.m.
to 5 a.m. tides withdraw
from each meridian, that ocean
here to claim you, now you as always in
between.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 7. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
The Poet’s Voice
Back at Mount Sinai Dad’s still asleep, exhausted by the chemo. The doctors won’t admit it but I can tell they don’t give him much of a chance. They’re wrong of course. He may be silent. He may be lying there with his belly pointing at the ceiling, tubes going in and out of everywhere, but behind the grey eyelids, behind the trembling lashes, his brain is working. Thinking of ways to make their job as difficult as possible.
I think about Mom being one floor down—different diseases, different floors. It’s a lot like Sam’s: rock at the entrance, folk one floor up. Classical at the top, as if to make certain you have the chance to hear Moby Grape or the Doors before you’re safely behind the barricades with Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.
For the moment Dad is classical, filed with the choral works of Verdi and Fauré. The requiems. Mom is folk, steeped in tradition but being updated—edit one section of bowel, no more colitis, we hope. It was Mom who always told me hope’s a tricky thing. Even though you want to keep it close, you need to be wary.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 7. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
The Sleep Clinic
By late afternoon I conclude that I’m not stoned. I haven’t been robbed in the night, whether the theft be of organs or money or identity. Dr. Ahman delivered me the impossible without asking for payment or thank you. He just helped me. And I gave him . . . what? My dream. Perhaps his machine was a recorder of the subconscious, and he has slipped away with a piece of my imagination. Or maybe he put a dream into me. If anything, that’s what it feels like to me. A trace of something other in my veins. A purpose I didn’t have yesterday. Either way, a more than fair trade.
I treat myself to a steak dinner and a single glass of cabernet at the Keg. There’s even a little harmless flirting with the waitress on my part, and she surpasses her strictly professional obligations by flirting back, making inquiries after my plans for the evening, if I thought I’d “be around later.” I shrug. Leave a millionaire’s tip.
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 7. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
7th Generation
(Ensemble #1 as CN Tower and Ensemble #3 as Moon)
CN Tower:
Hey there, hurry up. You’re gonna miss the show!
Moon:
What show?
Moon slowly travels across the night sky in a very sophisticated, ballet-posing sort of movement.)
CN Tower:
I can’t tell you. You’ll have to see for yourself. It’s a surprise.
Moon:
Alright, I’m coming. What is this big surpri—Oooh!
CN Tower:
You like?
Moon:
What happened? What did you do to yourself?
CN Tower:
Well, I would never presume to eclipse you . . . but I got new lights. Thirteen-hundred-and-thirty-three LED lights, to be exact.
Moon:
Wow. You really did.
CN Tower:
Yes ma’am! And they’ve got different colours and everything to, ya know, switch things up.
Moon:
So where does that leave me?
CN Tower:
Nothing has to change.
Moon:
Change is inevitable.
CN Tower:
You’re the moon. I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ve got a following already, I mean, a whole religion is devoted to you.
Moon:
True. True.
CN Tower:
Want to see what I can do?
Moon:
Okay.
CN Tower:
(Tower uses different physicality or some signifier of change for each colour)
Blue. Red. Green. Magenta. Uh, huh. What do you think?
Moon:
It’s nice.
CN Tower:
Nice? How about this? Red and white for Canada Day, huh huh? Red, white and blue for Independence Day? Red and green for Christmas? Huh?
Moon:
It’s pretty. But not very original. I mean, those tricks are a dime a dozen. What is there to differentiate you from the midway at the Exhibition or the Symphony of Fire? You’re a glorified Honest Ed’s. Except that when you blow a light, I doubt they’ll change it half as fast.
CN Tower:
Well, what do you know? You’re barely ever here for more than half a day at a time. I’m always around—night and day.
Moon:
In this lifetime. Look, I’ve seen a lot of towers come and go.
CN Tower:
I’ve heard you won’t be around forever either.
Moon:
Nothing trumps natural lighting.
What if there’s another blackout?
(The CN Tower’s lights stop shining.)
CN Tower:
Where did my lights go?
(The CN Tower falls.)
Blackout.
This is an excerpted scene from 7th Generation, a devised work created by b currrent’s 2007-2008 rAiz’n Ensemble: Cara Eastcott, Sedina Fiati, Joan M. Kivanda, Jajube Mandiela, Maxine Marcellin, Amanda Nicholls, Tanya Pillay, Navneet Rai, Marika Schwandt, Meghan Swaby, Malube Uhindu-Gingala and Deidre Walton. b current programs and develops original theatre works rooted in and reflecting voices from the Canadian Black diasporic communities.