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Nylon-Encased Flesh

by

I wake up, body splayed across the mattress in a starburst. Sunlight. Then rain. Then resurrected sunlight. The men on a neighbouring roof are hammering sadistically out of time. Bang. Pause. Bang bang. Pause. Pause. Bang bang pause. I decide I can’t stand my apartment walls and bound out. Walk through the heavy, congested streets, now weightless.

Countless people in Toronto are thinking about the one that got away. How many times have they fantasized about you? All the times you starred in a daydream. In someone else’s romantic comedy. I wonder whose movie I’m in.

A morning of furious feet. Victorian houses, oak balconies, stray tabbies, turquoise lawn ornaments, patio chaises. The shadows of leaves spin across the cement. Kensington Market bustles and hums with soft peaches, skinned trouts and pink crinolines with black lace. The dogs on Augusta Avenue yip like the out-of-work actors I hang out with. Several European seniors out for a stroll, a Japanese Laundromat that also sells rice paper, two blond kids playing with Hula-Hoops on Markham street, ten friendly cats looking for a few good scratches.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“The Trinity-Bellwoods drumming circle drips a collective energy. The dreadlocked kids paint their skin with sandalwood, gold dust and red hibiscus . . . then sweat out the colours into porous swirls as they dance . . . ” —Trinity Bellwoods

“Embedded in Connections: I-Spy. new years eve. corner of queen and bathurst. you boy. me girl. loved each other’s makeup. you went fetish. i went savage. still wanna kiss? . . . ” —Queen & Bathurts

“Beverley Street balconies are decayed hickory wood and twisted iron. The ambitious ivory festoons the dilapidated Victorian houses. Affluent front-porch-hounds sop up the hide-and-seek sun . . . ” —Beverley Street

“From their view, Arshia cannot see the homeless, the CN Tower, the convenience stores, the Spadina streetcars that fill the centre of the avenue like bone marrow. Only an affluent maple-lined street, with four-door Infinitis on carefully paved driveways . . . ” —Spadina Ave.

“She wants to skip over to Hazelton Lanes and watch the ladies with big lips try to eat soup. When they catch their own reflections in their spoons, they always ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh.’ . . . ” —Hazelton Lane

“Kensington Market bustles and hums with soft peaches, skinned trouts and pink crinolines with black lace. The dogs on Augusta Avenue yip like the out-of-work actors I hang out with . . . ” —Augusta Avenue

“Several European seniors out for a stroll, a Japanese Laundromat that also sells rice paper, two blond kids playing with Hula-Hoops on Markham street, ten friendly cats looking for a few good scratches . . . ” —Markham Street

“Yonge Street is nothing but an outdoor mall, loved by millions not for the architecture or the sunlight or the beauty in humans, but for the ability to acquire things that do not change your life . . . ” —Yonge Street

“Outside, rain taps Morse code on Christopher’s stained glass windows. From their view, Arshia cannot see the homeless, the CN Tower, the convenience stores, the
Spadina streetcars that fill the centre of the avenue like bone marrow . . . ” —CN Tower

“Through Chinatown, after picking up a university-stamped envelope from the post office. Asia slices through the city. An assembly line of golden Buddhas, Ming vases and brass gongs stretch up Spadina Avenue . . . ” —China Town

Vanishing Father

by

When Bing Hum got home late that evening from Harris, Smythe & Hum LLP, he found his fifteen-year-old daughter watching a movie-of-the-week that starred Lucy Liu in yet another of her “Asian slut” roles. Frozen in the doorway of Jade’s bedroom, he stared at the flat-screen TV screen where Lucy Liu, worse than nude in a half-bra, garter belt and stockings, lap-danced for a hairy-chested maintenance worker, her pinecone breasts thrust forward, her long waist undulating like the belly of a serpent.

Bing stood there, a bag of takeout Thai from Golden Mango dangling from his fingertips. For an instant, he wanted to barge in and shut off the TV.

“Jade.” He spoke to the back of her head. The volume from the TV was deafening and she was sprawled on the floor, her chin resting on her palms. A laptop, textbooks and a highliter littered the rug. His custody agreement gave him Jade one week out of every two, but whenever he saw her now, she seemed a little taller than before. In her volleyball sweats, her legs looked almost as long as her bed.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Home aka Snap Shots

by

She doesn’t remember the exact date, only that it was a weeknight, early spring, 1983; it was dark outside. She closed the door and locked it. Turned around and quickly checked the windows across the street. Walked a block carrying her baby and a small valise. Hailed a cab.

For two straight weeks she had burned evidence in the Godin and on the stove, delivered the ash to the toilet, and flushed it down. The house was clean of evidence, but the reek of smoke was telling enough.

This smell is the only reminiscence of her home when she tries to remember it in later years. There will be times when she wishes her home was licked by a magnificent fire, a fire that wrapped around the whole thing, crumpled walls in a mad waltz of flames, transformed the people inside into the same magnificent fire.

Half-burned hastily by the timid flames of a gas burner, drowned in a toilet bowl shouldn’t be anyone’s fate.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.

Toronto locations referenced in this piece

“She loves the intersection of Bloor and High Park. The four of them spend the first two months as guests of a young couple, in a junior one-bedroom, in the grey, squat building . . . ” —Bloor and High Park

Globetrotter

by 

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

by 

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.

Remembering Max

by

He was washing the windows when I came in: a brown stick with big eyes and a ’fro on a ladder, wiping the glass with one hand and continually hiking his pants up with the other. I stood on the sidewalk beneath him for a moment, both of us under the Café Americano awning, which promised “Tropical Food.” I looked up at him and he looked at me, dripping sponge in hand. “Hi,” I said. He worried his lower lip with his upper teeth a bit, and blinked. “Doing the windows,” I said. He blinked again. We stared at each other a moment longer and then I said, “Well, carry on,” and went in.

Eva and Tony, co-owners and newly wed, were at the bar, deliberating over a catalogue. They looked up and sang out hello when I came in.

“Hey,” I said, instead of hi, because that was my style. “You hired somebody to do the windows? ”

“He just showed up,” Eva said. “His name’s Max.”

“Asked if there was anything he could do.”

“Oh.”

“We thought the windows could use a wash.” Tony looked to Eva and she nodded to support his assessment.

Published in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Book 1. Purchase the book to read the full piece.
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