30.12.18

Vancouver Writing: Meredith Quartermain

Night Walk

west on Keefer Street
past the dark park, the SRO house
heavy-metal whines from a window
to a husky on the porch
rows of bunkhouse doors
single-room occupants
some sunk below the street.

Chain-link fence at the schoolyard,
man pushes a shopping cart east-
plastic bag on head- Bishop's mitre.
Through windows, men in their armchairs
with newspapers.
Turret house- its witch's hat
for the school's first principal-
snapped up by a landscape architect
his hostas and bananas,
whites tars of Clematis.
On a bench, elderly Chinese-
one pushing the bench,
the other sitting. Talking.

Further on, Joy Mansion-
lo-rise cubicles for old folk,
bank of mail boxes,
brown carpet wall-to-wall.
Then Good Fortune Rooms,
dusty pipes and patched ceilings,
red-letter EXITS to skinny halls-
custodian lends you 10 bucks at 50%,
you don't pay, he'll rough you up good,
if you don't die of smack or crack.

Gore Avenue- north,
red and green awnings,
shops shuttered, barred.
Street-market trinketeers gone home.
City barricades still up.
Lichee nuts, gailan, durian
at the place on Keefer that's always open.
Pender Street, east, back of Strathcona School.
Shouts of boys holding hockey sticks-
revved up with the game.

Pender and Campbell Avenue-
the mill owner's street-
Sacred Heart-,
its school and chain-link yard,
its rows of upper windows-
glass and bars-
single-roomer nuns or priests.

A grinding buzz-
the church's transformer- starts up
in the yellow dimness of street-lamps,
the blocks of housing for the poor.
A man scrapes along the sidewalk.
Muffled television thumps
over the asphalt
to the locked crossed doors.

- from: Meredith Quartermain- Vancouver Walking