“What you got there, ol’ man?” He raised his head and met the bloodshot eyes of the skinny guy on the neighbouring cot who had just spoken. Another junkie. Or tweaker. Or crackhead. Same difference. Like all the young ones in the shelter. He looked back down at the tattered newspaper clippings he had spilled
Parched He looks around uncertainly, focuses on what has changed. His glasses are gone, hearing aid too; no socks, loose slippers, he’s wearing someone else’s shirt. The tv’s a long way off and muted. So many faces he can’t place. There are screams and sobs; bodies sleep or rock in wipe clean wing chairs. In
Edna’s Mouth Edna and her mouth. They are never separate. Electric pink gums that are slowly receding from the ocher-rimmed peg teeth. “People with mouths like that go nowhere in life,” your mother said as she was spending a wad on the orthodontics that would take over your face for two years. It’s true. Who
THE MANSION [ EXCERPT ] ______________________ June 2006: It felt good to be in the old neighbourhood– Travelling to a vegan potluck at a house On Sutter Street on foot gave me A chance to see my first home in the city again. In between a Solid brick Black Protestant church & Expensive luxury condominiums
The old house, built in 1895, was the best of weathered antiques having hugged North Rogers Street from days of horses to days of horse-powered engines, and now to electric cars. As the story goes, Grandad purchased the old house shortly after returning from WWI by merely signing his name on a blank piece of
“Never trust a man, Hina. They’re all scum.” I was nine years old when my mother first said this to me. She had failed yet again to secure a divorce from my father in Pakistan—her second attempt at doing so. The first time she tried, I was five and remember the day we came back
The sea gives back all it takes, you had told me once, as we stood on a large boulder, looking out into the twilight sea. It was our favourite spot, our boulder – a slate grey, oval piece of the ancient rocks, smoothed to perfection by centuries of weathering. I was sixteen and naïve. As
It’s a short drive to the park. Winter has made a whimsical return as if to poke fun at Spring. Snow powdered trees appear to float in rainwater lagoons. I throw my daydreams into placid pools and wish for sunlight. In the foreground, flakes fall, melting instantly on a glass stage. In the distance, they
Poured what remained of his dreams Into a cereal bowl – Well, it was actually a McDonald’s cup But it served the same function. Figured if he could eat it He could go on living it too Digesting it square by square, Calorie by calorie. Except it had lost its taste Or rather he’d lost
It’s 1995 and your first job. You spend so much time in these shoes your feet have sweated through the leather. It leaves white rings on the shoes, sweat or dried soda and popcorn dust. You stand at a podium in a black vest and bowtie and tear tickets. Enjoy the show. You direct people
