by Yaya Yao
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.
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.
by Andrew Pyper
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.
by David Layton
Vincent walked to the back of the plane, to the very back where the seats didn’t properly recline, took his place by the window and hoped without much conviction that the two empty seats beside him would remain that way. Flight 966 left Toronto for Barbados every morning and it always seemed to be full. It was April 12th, the sky was overcast, but the airport crew working on the tarmac wore light jackets. Low season in the Caribbean would officially begin in three days time; winter had passed, summer would soon be here.
In the broadest of outlines, Vincent knew what he was doing here; he could trace his way back through a series of random events that inevitably led him to today’s seat assignment. It was harder for him to imagine why all the other passengers filing down the aisle had come to join him here today. There were couples on vacation, Barbadians going home, men and women on business.
by Alicia Peres
Gracie stands at the window, arms akimbo, and looks through her reflection to the front lawn. In her transparent body, grass sprouts where her heart should be. It’s patchy. Choked with weeds. Shifting her gaze down closer to the house, she peers through her belly. The flowerbeds are parched and the perennials—which should be thriving, having had years to establish themselves—appear dead. She can offer them less help each year. She eyes their collective enemy: sturdy new weeds, waiting to spring up and strangle what little life remained in her beloved, struggling plants. She narrows her eyes—Just see what’s in store for you this morning, you little thugs. I don’t care how much pollen you shoot at me, I’ll get rid of you!—then glances up at the early morning sky. It hangs gloomy, defeated by the sixty-watt lamps in the living room behind her.
The huge pane of glass also reflects much of her home’s interior. This stretches from the house in ghostly array. The “new” sofa, bought a year ago when Errol retired, floats along the driveway to her left.
The city sometimes forgets where she lives. The streets are confused. Air of cinders and flowers, the nerves of the boulevards on edge. Parks desert themselves. The address of her future uncertain.
She grabs for the world, tenants a coach house among restored Victorians, rose gardens and fountains. Brick walls dream of hay and horses, the scent of leather harnesses, ghosts tangled in their tethers. The soiled gloves of the coachman, carriage of sleep. A lost earring, a midnight slipper.
Outside her bedroom, graffiti across the road reads:
Tom Hendry is a rat
Testified against his older brother for murder
Full moon pinned between skyscrapers, the alley becomes a night-river of smashed beer bottles, obscenities screamed by crack dealers and drunks.
Toronto locations referenced in this piece
“In the path of resistance, the city doors are locked down. We ride the train to the edge, where the buildings meet the mouth of the harbour. The boxcars slice a path, leave a stiff suture. We hope the train will ease into Union Station, deliver a state . . . ” —Union Station
