My brother mid-scream, ready as ever to be part of the show and have his
close-up.
My father made signs and my mother worked with him.
In St. Petersburg, Florida, was my uncle. He was my father’s older
brother, the first-born.
My uncle took us fishing in Key West.
We dragged a net and caught shrimp, a baby shark, and a blowfish the size
of a human eyeball. The blowfish we kept.
Because it was scared, it blew itself up, a hard round ball.
My mother loved this creature and tried to preserve it as it was dying.
She tied string around the tail, made a knot, and hung it in the backyard.
But the humidity in Florida kept it moist.
It rotted.
It started to smell, and the shape it was started to flatten and then dry out.
We drove home, back to Toronto with this blowfish rotting in the car.
The smell got to be so bad my mother put a few drops of Chanel No. 5
perfume on it every four hours.
By the time we got home, the blowfish had shrunk to the size of a raisin.
It was only we who knew that stinking raisin had once been a blowfish.
A blowfish.
Once round, a prickly thing, full of air.
To this day, I can’t stand Chanel No. 5.
It reminds me of that blowfish.
Rot. Raw.
How the thing lost its shape in the world and became a small hardness.
It’s strange, isn’t it?
How this rot reminds me of a time when my family was happy.
How thrilled and alive we all were together, inside King Kong’s palm, his
open mouth.
We lost the shape of who we were.
And there’s nothing left but that shape in the car.
The one no one else could say was alive, but us.
CHRISTMAS
We are five levels below the ground
I didn’t know basements go this far down
What everyone
Is doing here is counting cash
Bags and bags and bags
Brought in by a security truck
We count this cash
Make sure it all adds up
Enter the correct amount
Right down to the penny
The cash passing through
Is not mine
I have never seen
This kind of money before
Where it comes from
Is labelled
It’s all from grocery stores
Food in every brightly lit aisle
At four in the morning
We stop, form a circle, and exercise
Someone turns on music
And we move along
I didn’t bring anything to eat
Didn’t have time to make lunch
And a woman there knows this
She is or has been a mother before
She tells me I should eat this
This thing she made at home
It’s warm
She can’t possibly finish it
All by herself, she tells me
And I have some
I haven’t told her anything
Not even my name
Where I’ve been or why
I’m here
I didn’t say
What happened
What I lost
Or what’s wrong
That’s something people do
Up there
TWINS
I remember the evening we saw
this movie. I was eleven. My parents
just bought a van. They wanted to go
to the drive-in and we waited for it to
pillows and a blanket, hot chocolate. I fell
asleep in the backseat, tired of waiting. I might
have woken up a few times because I do
remember this scene of them dancing
in a bar. I remember my parents laughing
at how these two could be twins. One giant
and the other out of shape and short. That
these two could come from the same place
at the same time and could manage all
these years apart. When I think about it,
the two of them were like that too even if
they didn’t think of it like that then. I
now wish I hadn’t fallen asleep that day.
I wish I had stayed awake, remembered all
the times they laughed so hard like this together.
There were so many of them. We always
had an abacus around. Maybe if I learned
how to use one, I could have shifted a few beads
and then tell you how much a lifetime costs.
THEORY OF WRITING
We all know two plus two equals four
And we begin with that. We learn to add
Before we learn how to take away, to lose.
It’s a great way to learn how to write. To
Have a formula, a line to follow. Before
We know what adding means, we have to
Know what two means. What two and two
Means together. There are many ways to get to
Four. Five subtract one is equal to four.
One times four is equal to four. The square
Root of sixteen is four. A square root
Is a number that looks exactly like it, multiplied
By itself. Four divided by one also equals
Four. Four to the power of one is equal to four, too.
We can get there through a derivative, if
That’s how you want it. The square of the
Hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares
Of the other two sides can also get you to four.
There are so many ways to get to four.
Once all these other ways of getting
To four are understood, it’s not really four
You’re after. Anyone can get to four. And
You know this. Maybe it’s the certainty of
Four. That you can always get to it. That it will
Always turn out the same. Maybe that’s what
You want. The certainty of four. Or maybe
It’s the ways in which you know how
To get to four that is the point of writing. What
You had to learn and build, the time it took
To hold open that possibility for yourself.
ANOTHER PICTURE OF US
Maybe it was me who had taken this picture. My parents
are looking at the camera, unsmiling, serious, my father’s
arm over my mother’s shoulder. I know this picture is taken
at their friend’s house. Behind them are photographs of other
people. It’s cold. They are wearing sweaters. My mother’s
shoes match her red leather belt and lips. They are kitten heels.
The photo isn’t very clear. Dark. Maybe the flash had been
turned off. This photo had been tucked in behind another one.
It was one still intact of the two of them. I am trying to take
what I know now and try to see if I can find it here. Had it
happened here on this day or did it come apart years after.
They are the same height, all dressed up, somewhere to go.
A party, a wedding. Maybe there will be some dancing.
I hope where they are going, they will have fun and remember
all of it. I hope they remember how they were together and who
they were with. I hope they remember their love, the comfort of it,
the way it feels to know you have it. I can’t see them together
like this anymore. But here we are, together, for once.
A SNAKE
thinks
itself
so free
shedding
its skin
leaving
everything
it was
behind,
but when it dies
all that’s left
are the bones
it was locked up in
They form
and bar
all the facts
inside
MANGOSTEENS
My mother taught me to pick
one. They look all the same
from the outside. You can’t
tell by knocking, shaking, or
looking at the skin which
is ripe. The ones my mother
picked out, the fruit was full
and bounteous, sweet, barely
any seed. The ones I chose
opened to seeds, bitter and
furious things. She told me
to turn one upside down
and count the bumps. I picked
them like she did, brought them
to a fence I climbed over, and
gave them to you. You did
not want these things. Said
you couldn’t eat anything
like that. I didn’t understand.
It didn’t make sense. But then,
I saw you change. Sometimes
it happened over a few days,
other times in an afternoon,
or just under an hour. It always
started with your teeth. They
chattered and chopped, then you
bit your lip and ate your mouth
and head, and you turned
to get the rest of you. Each time,
I built you back from memory,
put things in the wrong place,
further and further from what
you were. Each time, you got angry,
ranted and raved, told me this is not
the way you looked. I wasn’t sure
anymore, and you’d start up again.
Each time you vanished, bloody
and painful this way. Yesterday,
you said you didn’t want to keep
doing this. I wondered about the soul,
if that was something you ate up too,
something I didn’t build for you.
MISTER SNUFFLEUPAGUS
You wouldn’t know it but I’m Mister Snuffleupagus
Big Bird’s best friend on a street called Sesame
It took a lot of work to be Mister Snuffleupagus
No one really knows that
I did it for two and a half years
Big Bird told me “Most people don’t last that long”
I didn’t want to be Mister Snuffleupagus
I did it for Big Bird
I thought he could really use a real friend
I went to the audition and I got the part
Each week there was a new audition and I always made the cut
I don’t really know why
Maybe they were impressed I did it all by myself
It usually took a team of two or three to be him
I blinked his eyes and fluttered his eyelashes
I moved all four legs, that tail and trunk
I smiled on cue
I sang and swayed and propped him up
All the lines I had to memorize
All the staying-out-of-the-way I did
There were others who had been Mister Snuffleupagus
But no one played that part as good as me
Maybe you noticed something different about him
When I was Mister Snuffleupagus
I noticed something different about Big Bird
He was happy
The view I had from inside the suit
I watched all the friends who came
And never saw me
I watched all the games you played
I never got to play them with anyone but Big Bird
He had me all to himself
I loved Big Bird
I guess that’s the reason I came back each week to audition
Big Bird and I knew each other without our costumes
We had seen the other’s face
He let me see his face
He said something about love and he took off his head
I took my head off too, but it was because I knew what I was
Big Bird told me I could be replaced
Anyone could be Mister Snuffleupagus, he said
I argued back
It’s not true, I said
Only I could be Mister Snuffleupagus
The same way only he could be Big Bird
That year he turned forty-two
The year he knew the answer to life, the universe, and everything
But he didn’t know the question
I was there
I was there when the room filled with the friends he wanted
I was good at having feelings and having fun
But that isn’t proof of anything
Feelings
I was the expert at the small joys
The one who asked all the questions
After a while, I got tired of not being seen
I knew what I was
I stopped auditioning
My scenes were there in full colour
My suit was worn and held up by others
It happens to everyone, I guess
Not long after I had been gone
Everyone else moved out of the neighbourhood
Even the grouchy guy in the garbage can
Friends stopped coming over for dinner
Big Bird doesn’t know why that is
I do
When I was there
I knew what I was
I was Mister Snuffleupagus
That’s why
Big Bird moved out of the neighbourhood too
There were other Mister Snuffleupaguses I am sure
The show, after all, has to go on
But none were like me
Big Bird would never say that
Not to me
It would mean there was something behind all the play
Something real
Just because you have nothing to show for it
It doesn’t mean it wasn’t real
All the children are still there
Grown up now, of course
They don’t know what I made and did for them
And those who have taken my scenes don’t know what I broke
They don’t know I spit those words in that mouth first
I want to say what I never got to say
That I was there
That it was me
That it was mine
It all belonged to me
I was there when it all happened
At the beginning
You won’t find that in his stories or his books
Not even a footnote or appendix
There isn’t a record of it
Happiness embarrasses Big Bird
He can’t believe in it
To keep his revolution going
He won’t ever say it
So I will say it for myself
Because I live in this world too
Notes
1. “Sunrise with Sea Monsters” – see J. M. W. Turner’s painting
2. “O” – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/03/laos-cluster-bombs-uxo-deaths and the July 2018 New York Times coverage of the dam collapse in Laos.