Weeping by a fake porthole in the Hilton’s breakfast restaurant I eat seconds of bacon, and thirds My grandfather wouldn’t have minded my breaking kashrut He would have whispered “I won’t tell if you don’t tell about the cheeseburger yesterday,” and chuckled sweetly My mother is at her mother's place not listening to the sound of the phone ring— sealing saran-wrap around a sponge cake, our Friday night leftovers soggy, teetering in the pan The ocean solution looks like all of us— in bits, floating wisps of white pollution What’s wrong doesn’t drown us We are doing dead man’s float except for grandpa My sister arrives with the breakfast vouchers I get whatever I want before I figure it won’t be out of pocket I would pay for anything today even though I’ve been on boiled beans and rice for weeks had no choices to make about money Her and cousin Jer come back from the buffet with full plates laughing about something Jeremy gets on the phone calling our younger cousins to join us We all eat as much as we can
poetry
MS-13 in My Classroom
Blue pants, white stripes, trace portable tattoos into the fertile land of a teacher’s psyche: a place where crushed heads and dismembered limbs soak in liquid red. The colours you wear bear a statement of the world your ancestors were unfortunate to inherit. A place where war has turned Natives against Europeans, Europeans against Natives, Native Europeans against European Natives, you against yourself. Blue sky rushes alongside white clouds. White petals caress blue waves. Blue marbles roll over white sand. The colours you wear bear a statement of America’s aching past, and the dislocation of your culture today . . .
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 3. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
When We First Arrived in Toronto
parts of Italy were intact, like ways of looking at the snow. it was in the eyes, the Tuscan light, the way it made the snow explode, and wood, and iron railings and soot; it was in the eyes, and through the spirit, and spirit loved the world and was not alien to it and so the festive was a box of chocolates or any homely thing in the world, for nothing could resist the song of a boy’s heart . . .
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Globetrotter
toronto is amsterdam adrift at sea it breathes the open atlantic where lines and angles blur and bend into mist toronto is prague without her anchoring of narrow streets narrow sky and virgin-tight apartment blocks it is london long-jumping her imperial shadows trafalgar-ing into space . . .
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
union
for eight months, i shifted swayed in weekly motion left union station expectant & wondrous entered kingston still stretching away the slumber of deep morning— the train knocking its rhythmic time upon my restful cheek (i am happiest when moving) . . .
Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
Fake Za’atar
In a city where the Za’atar is fake, We are a genuine family But not complete. We are assembled from fractures of families who think That farther is better Conducting a Passover Seder without saying God And believing That next year We will be in Toronto, which has been Re-constructed. Knowing that even if it were completely rebuilt, It will still be a night’s sleep and a little bit of a day away from Israel . . .