Say you are from some bay or cove or tickle,
but live in Toronto
Say you read Dylan Thomas,
but don’t. Read Dylan

Talk of fireflies, blackflies, bones, stones, water, mirrors
Talk of poison ivy and first love in the same breath
Call something a “palimpsest” and acknowledge Earle Birney
Title it “Bushed” and acknowledge every poet before you

Put in something to kill
a moose in the headlights, a bear, salmon, cod,
a car, a culture, the planet, god
Don’t kill it till after it stares you down
Don’t look for history where there is none
Look for history in trees

Write in chopped
up prose, minus explanation
Call your poems totems, minus punctuation
Make “you” the poet, the reader, a lover,
and no one in particular
Claim a hundred words for snow,
but call it snow.

David Haskins

On The Way Out

I tell you, at dawn I'm getting us
out of here, I said, sitting on a crate
that swayed on the ribbed cement floor,
its faded label, Jaffa Oranges, holding
onto one of the laths, making my mind
fool my empty stomach with a sudden whiff
of intoxicating aroma in the nostrils.

I just broke a slice of stale bread in half
and almost smiled, the act an ironic rendition
of afikoymen at seder I was part of
in my friend's plush Park Avenue apartment
on a quiet evening centuries ago,
his wife's mother's joking remark, uttered
like some refrain: when are we going to get
to wine, the only thing I was not ready for.

This is another world, and another life
I was not ready for; the front door dislodged
by mortar shells is held together by a rope,
hardly a mark to keep off the angels of death.

At daybreak, when the light begins to nibble
at the insides of darkness, we sneak out,
hugging the buildings' faces, walking in step
with the rhythm of distant explosions.
I count the doors, stop at the seventh entrance,
open, as I was informed it would be, and enter
the cave, feeling my every step; I point
at the ground floor apartment at the left,
abandoned, its door off the hinges letting me
see the balcony curtain dance in the breeze.
Once inside, as we meander, trying to avoid
dark shadowy edges of some overturned furniture,
I glance at the couch and there, placed
almost perfectly in the middle, a huge
saucer-eyed doll stares at me, its golden locks
and a long frilly dress, white as snow,
too visible to have been carried by those
who had fled, her arms stretched out
as though inviting us to join her for cookies,
figs and nuts, raisins and some sweet wine.

On the balcony, we go over the railing
and drop onto the parking lot, bend over,
zig-zagging among burned-out, mangled cars
till we reach the brook and slide down
the wet dirt; I take off my shoes, you, too,
the cold satiny water curling around
my ankles like bed-sheets in winter causing
the body to cringe like a caterpillar's
whenever, as a kid, I'd prick it with a stick,
driven by some inexplicable impulse to test
its pain tolerance, the act later taken only
as simple mischief, the gurgling sound of water
that of a lullaby making the mind drift
downstream all the way to some warm sea.

On the embankment, facing the open space,
a soccer field, goal-posts gone, we start
to run, and I feel your hand touch my back,
withdraw, touch again, as if to make sure
that I'm still there, or urge me to move faster.
Suddenly I sense something in my pants' pocket
presses against my thigh, hampering my stride,
yet beating in unison with my heart, and
then I realize you put it there to guide
us safely, that small cross your father made
of two pieces of wood tied with a soiled rope;
he kept it hidden in the concentration camp,
the only possession he managed to bring back,
and my eyes begin to well with tears, fogging
my view, as my nostrils are once again invaded
by the smell of oranges, desperately fighting
off the odor of gun powder and a couple
of silhouetted shapes in the grass, their arms
stretched out like those of the doll left behind.

Mario Susko

Out Of My League

I’ve been in my cupboard for three minutes and seventeen….eighteen…..nineteen seconds. Twenty seconds. I closed the door two minutes and forty-two seconds ago and switched on the light two minutes and thirty-eight seconds ago. I had to be quick because the wood snakes can move fast in the dark, so fast they’d just look like a smudge across your eyes and they’d be buried in your head before you knew it. When there’s light outside, like in the morning when I go to the cupboard to fetch my pants, they’re back in the wood lying sideways and sometimes curling round each other as though they wouldn’t harm a flea. Mum says it’s called the grain of the wood and I can’t tell her they’re snakes because otherwise they’d go for her too and they’d be all stuck in her head and they’d be wriggling and she’d look like that lady in my book and she’d turn Dad to stone with one look. She said that to Dad once. She said I think you must be made of stone, but I’m sure she meant it in a good way, because she wouldn’t want to shake her snakes and turn him into a statue. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t, anyway, because statues aren’t a big lot of use except in parks for birds to perch on and do bird droppings. They couldn’t drive to football or buy the programme and at home they’d just be plonked there getting in the way and not saying very much. You never talk to me is another thing Mum says to Dad. She doesn’t say that to me. She says Stop prattling, Daniel, don’t talk with your mouth full.

It’s like there are two boys in my house, although there’s really only me here. One boy’s called Daniel – that’s Mum’s son, and the other’s called Danny – that’s Dad’s. Mum’s son is named after a man that’s the manager of an orchestra, Daniel Barrowboy I think he’s called. I don’t know why an orchestra needs a manager because they don’t run around much, but Mum likes to listen to their music and she has it on loudly in the living room and softly in her surgery. Dad’s son is named after his favourite footballer, Danny Blanchflower, and he said Danny could pass the ball from one end of the pitch to the other like a hot knife through butter. When he said that I was a bit confused, but I didn’t tell him because he’d just think I was a der-brain and stop taking me to football probably, and then where would I be? When he was away once I tried it out, just to see. I heated up a knife in some boiling hot water even though I’m not supposed to boil water on my own, and pulled it through a packet of butter. It made a horrible blobby mess which stained my new strip and I thought it was a bit strange that Danny would want to do that, but perhaps that’s how they played in the old-fashioned days. I’ve got another name, too, in the middle of my two main names but I don’t tell the boys at school because they beat up this boy who’s called Lark, even though it wasn’t his fault, it was his stupid parents. I said that, I said It’s not his fault he’s got a rubbish name, it’s his stupid parents, but I said it softly so they wouldn't beat me up as well. There was all blood down his shirt but I heard him saying to Sir that he’d had a nosebleed, that’s all, and Sir sent him to the Medical Room. He didn't come back to school for two days and I thought he might be dead, although it’s only old ladies that die normally.

My middle name’s Pele and it’s pronounced PELL-AY, not PEEL, because that would mean I was a Satsuma or something. Dad said he had to fight Mum to call me that, But I won the day, he said, I got my way. I don’t think he beat her up or gave her a bloody nose or anything, like Lark, except for that one time. Only Mum said she’d been really spaz and walked into a door, and Don’t worry Daniel, how about a game of Subbuteo? She’s really spaz at playing Subbuteo, but I don’t tell her because it’s horrible when she cries, so I have to let her win sometimes.

Six minutes and twenty-two seconds.

This is the match that’ll decide the league and the capacity crowd shudders with excitement. Both teams have played their hearts out this season and they’re evenly matched, though Dad’s team’s goal average is a nose ahead of Mum’s. This North London derby is something of a grudge match and there have been rumours of trouble brewing between the fans. It looks as though every off-duty police officer in the city has had his leave cancelled and they hedge the pitch with dark blue, their eyes flicking between the pitch and the fans. It’s a struggle to keep their minds on the job. Behind the North End goal there’s a sea of blue and white and the fans are chanting Come on Dadd-ee! Clap clap. Come on Dadd-ee! Clap clap; at the South End, fans in their red and yellow call back You’re Dad! You’re Dad! You’re really fucking sad, it’s a goo-al! It’s a goo-al! Old enmities flock around the stadium like starlings.

I look at my bare feet. Magic feet, Dad calls them. I left my school shoes by my bed, exactly four thumb lengths away from the foot of the bed, on the big green diamond in the rug. I made sure the left sock went in the left shoe and the right sock in the right shoe after I’d folded them in the special sock way: toes folded up, top folded down, then rolled. I had to do the left one twice because it wasn’t right. Where I’m sitting, under the light, is my best place because when I stretch out my right leg, my toes can hook over the backs of my Nikes and drag them over to me. They’re Shox R4’s and Mum said I couldn’t have them because they’re made by children who are only about my age in some country a long way away and they’re not paid any money and they’re probably starving most of the time so they’re quite ill I expect. They’re not lucky like you, she said. But when Dad came back from New York that one time, he said I’ve got something for you, Pelican (that’s his special name for me) and he opened his case and there they were. Blue and white. Our team’s colours. I had to bring them straight up here to the cupboard because I could see Mum’s face and I knew she was going to kick off.

Six minutes to kick off and the band marches off to Souza oomph, cheerleaders swirling in their wake. The linesmen punctuate the edges of the pitch, keen and vigilant, and the referee looks at his watch. There’s a wave at the centre of the North End and a huge banner unfurls: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid in white capitals edged with blue.

Me and Dad have a season ticket for Tottenham and when he’s in the country we go together. It’s not all the time because he’s away quite a lot so sometimes I have to watch the match on Sky and Mum gets cross because she says it’s dinner time and I can’t eat in front of the telly and she switches it off. Sometimes when Dad’s here she even hides the remote. She says Come on, Daniel, it’s just you and me and I've made your favourite, aubergine fritters with pesto, but I don't care if I miss the fritters even though I’ll be hungry like the children who made my Nikes, but I bet if they were here they’d want to watch the game as well and I’d buy them some Wotsits with my pocket money and I’d teach them about offside. I’ve told Mum about the offside rule about two million and three times, but she says she’d rather read a book and Why don’t you read a book, Daniel? Dad doesn’t read books and I said that to her once, But Dad doesn’t read books, Mum, and she went all quiet and then she said Dad doesn’t do anything. That’s not fair actually, because when he’s here he helps me with my kit and he showed me how to use dubbin and he’s come to four of my matches so he does do something but I kept it in my head because she’d probably go mad at me if I said it.

I hear the click of the front gates as the remote opens them and Dad’s car scrunches up the drive. I think Mum must have heard it too because there’s a smashing sound from the kitchen and she says Shit! Shit! I lift my right hand up and pull down my Brazil strip. It’s underneath the Spurs strip with “Blanchflower – 4” on the back and on top of the England strips that are too small for me now. I know how to pull out Brazil without mucking up the folding of the others. The strip folding takes longer than the sock folding because it’s more complicated and I have to tap five times on the left sleeve and seven times on the right with two seconds between each tap. One time it took me twenty-three minutes and fifteen seconds to fold Blanchflower, but I didn’t mind because it has to be right or else.

I pull on my blue shorts and the shirt with ‘Pele – 10’ on the back. 1280 goals in 1360 games, 92 hat tricks: he was the king. I bet he was never scared. Dad’s key turns in the lock.

The players run onto the pitch, Dad holding the hand of Danny, the team’s mascot, and Mum bringing on Daniel. They line up facing each other and, hand on heart, they sing the National Anthem lustily. The whistle blows and they pool across the pitch. The crowd roars with tonsil-bruising jubilance and surges to its feet. This has been a long time coming. The cup has been passing between the teams for years, Dad’s aggressive tactics well met by Mum’s impenetrable defence. The captains shake hands, the referee checks his watch, the linesmen check theirs, the whistle shrills: kick off.

Twelve minutes and thirteen seconds. Thirteen and a half seconds.

They’re kicking off down there. I knew they would when Dad got home because when Mum came back from her evening surgery, she looked like she’d been injected with a bad mood by a giant needle. I raced into the kitchen to make her a cup of coffee, but I forgot to swing the door four times, so I had to go back. I made it how she likes it, in the thing with the other thing that pushes the coffee down to the bottom and she said Thank you, Daniel, you’re a good boy. Tell me about your day. Fine, I said, It was fine but I’ve got homework to do and then I’ll clean out the gerbil and I want to read my book and she said Good boy again, but her voice didn’t sound real exactly. It was more like the echo you get when you shout in a room without any furniture in.

I came up here doing the jump every three steps without any mistakes, which made me not scared to begin with and I moved my chair backwards and forwards so Mum would think I was doing my homework. What I was doing really was getting my cupboard ready. I got Carrotty Rabbit down from the top shelf where I have to hide him because Mum says I’m a big boy now and soft toys are for babies and I put him ten thumb lengths in front of my Nikes. I found my football album and opened it at page 37 to fish out the piece of paper I’ve hidden there, the one with all bits of my nails from when I bite them and dried up bits of skin from my feet and I opened the paper and laid it on the carpet where my left thigh was going be when I sat down. I pushed the bits across the paper just to be sure they made the right scratchy noise still and they did. So when they kicked off, I slid into my place in the cupboard like a stick up a lolly.

Mum’s voice sounds like she shoved it in the deep freeze before speaking. Maybe that’s how she speaks at work, to her patients. Perhaps she has to speak really coldly because otherwise they’ll get worried and then they won’t get better and they’ll say it’s all her fault. She’s telling Dad it’s all his fault. She’s saying to him And how was I supposed to know where you were? What if something had happened to Daniel? Obviously I don’t expect you to care what happens to me, but suppose he’d fractured his leg at football? Or fallen onto a railway line? Or died from – I didn’t understand what I might have died from, but it sounded like ‘men and lighting’. I suppose it might be something to do with being electrocuted, like in cartoons.

Mum’s team has possession and is moving the ball between the back four in short, surgical passes whilst moving inexorably forwards. There’s plenty of room on the wing and one perfect pass should guide it down the pitch and slide it into the goal. Dad’s team, wrong-footed, has left a gaping hole nine miles wide in their defence. The reds and yellows bellow, ‘You’re dumb! You’re scum! You take it up the bum! You’re a pooo-oof! You’re a pooo-oof!’ and the blues and whites subside into a silent gloom. Then from nowhere, a superb tackle.

Dad says Get out of my way, which is quite a rude thing to say, you should always say please, but perhaps he needs to go to the toilet really quickly and Mum’s standing in front of the door so he can’t get in, but there’s a noise like someone falling against a wall and she says You bastard. That’s rude as well but she says it again, You bastard. That’s just what you do, isn’t it? When you know you’re in the wrong you lash out like some savage. Why do you bother coming home at all, Simon? What’s here for you any more? And Dad says Not you, Fenella and that’s not her name, it’s not her name, she’s called Ella, everybody calls her Ella, she hates her other name, she says so. Dad says How’s Robin, by the way? and he says Robin really loudly. You’re like a dripping tap, Mum says, I’m sure Robin’s fine but since I haven’t seen him for three years I wouldn’t know. Get over it, Simon, will you, or are you still having trouble getting it up?

Nineteen minutes and twenty-three seconds. Twenty-four.

Mum’s team pick up the ball from a muffed pass and Dad’s strikers struggle to regain the form they’ve shown in countless other matches. Everything hangs on this game: promotion, relegation, transfer: the cup itself. Mum’s team, fleet of foot and determined, press on down the field with the tactical intelligence they’ve shown all season. Dad’s team looks bewildered, as though the rules have been changed and no-one’s told them.

Twenty minutes and forty-two seconds. Forty three.

Suddenly Dad’s yelling. What would you know about that? The last time you came anywhere near me was to try and mug me for another baby! That’s all I‘ve ever been to you, isn’t it – a bloody sperm donor and a piggy bank! And you weren’t even good at that, Mum says, You’re crap in bed and you’ve always spent more than you’ve earned. Your credit card bill came through while you were in Bogotá, by the way. How is it possible to spend three hundred pounds on a meal in Colombia? Well, I suppose that’s quite an achievement, really– or did they see you coming? Saw a fat white man with a fat white man’s wallet and ‘take me for an idiot’ written all over him? You’re pathetic, Simon, you’re a complete waste of space. Why don’t you just jump back in that little-prick sports car of yours and bugger off. There’s nothing for you here. I hear feet shuffling and then there’s a horrible noise, like someone being sick, like when I was sick after eating the bad prawns that time and it’s Mum, I know it is, perhaps she’s being sick and it’s OK, it’s OK, you don’t die from being sick and now’s the time for Carrotty Rabbit and I reach over and put his special ear in my mouth and I suck and suck and it tastes salty and dusty and it’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK. Dad’s voice has gone growly and he says But Danny’s mine, Danny’s staying with me, bitch, and I hate it when they shout at each other about me, that’s the worst, and she says Daniel and he says Danny and I can be both, I can be both, I can be Danny and Daniel, I don’t mind, stop hurting Mummy, Daddy, let’s go to football, let’s knock a ball around in the garden, please make it OK, Carrotty, please.

Dad’s team has wrenched the ball away from Mum’s with a challenge the referee has let pass. He waves his hand: play on. The reds and yellows bellow from the stands – Refer-EE! and they start singing, ‘Who’s your father, who’s your father, who’s your father referee? You haven’t got one, you’re a bastard…” and the North End sways with blue and white rapture. Dad’s powering down the pitch, unstoppable now, fending off crunching tackles from Mum’s team, a trail of wounded defenders in his wake, and the referee refuses to stop play despite maddened gesticulations from his linesmen, his red and yellow cards nestling blindly in his top pocket. Dad’s team slides the ball back and forth between them, keeping it down and playing it on the floor. They’re looking like champions now, the strikers finally speaking the same language as they approach the penalty box. Mum’s goal opens its mouth and grins. It’ll all be over in seconds.

Twenty-three minutes and nine seconds. Nine and a quarter.

I scratch my bits of nail and skin across the paper, but it’s not working, the magic isn’t working, and I think maybe I should come out of the cupboard and go downstairs and say in a loud voice even though it’s rude to shout, Stop! Mum and Dad, stop! But I’m a cowardy cowardy custard and I stay here because what if Dad gets angry with me and then it’ll all get much worse and he’ll go away and not come back like that’s what happened to Harry at school. And Harry cried once at break time because he said he was missing his dad and someone – Ben, I think it was – put wet toilet paper on his head because he said Harry was being a girl. Cry-baby girlie, he said, and at the back of my eyes there’s a horrible itch but I can’t scratch it and I think I’m going to cry but it’s OK because no-one can see me. That’s another good reason for staying in here, because if I cry and no-one can see me, then I won’t be a girlie cry-baby and I bet Ben cries sometimes when no-one’s there. There’s a banging noise from downstairs, over and over, one, two three, four, five, and I can hear Mum trying to speak. I don’t know why she can’t speak very well. Maybe the sick’s got stuck in her throat, but between bangs she says Bang! Daniel. Bang! Isn’t. Bang! Yours! Bang!

Mum’s goalie has come out of the goal and Dad’s striker sidefoots the ball to another striker who’s lost his marker, racing in from the wing into the box: he picks it up, controls it and aims. The reds and yellows start up a steady chant: Daniel isn’t yours! Daniel isn’t yours! The striker’s boot connects with the ball and –ohhhhh! – it hits the bar.

The banging’s stopped. No-one’s saying anything and it’s worse than when they’re shouting. Sometimes when they’re shouting I put my hands over my ears and I hum some tunes and then I can’t hear anything. That’s a really good tactic, like that away game when Spurs played four-four-two and smacked five into the net in the first half. Then suddenly Dad’s making a noise and it sounds like the dog next door when it went all wild and chewed the plumber’s leg so badly he had to have an operation. They killed the dog afterwards, though that’s not what Mum said. She said ‘put to sleep’, like it was a kind thing to do, but I knew it was killed. Dad’s noise gets louder like when he’s revving the car outside and he’s cross because he thinks I’m dawdling, but I’m just counting, I’m just tapping, and Mum shouts Don’t, Simon, don’t do it, and then she screams and I remember the screams when the plumber was trying to get Willie the dog off his leg but this is worse because it’s Mum and I’m not there to pull Dad off her and now she’s crying and I’m sucking Carrotty Rabbit and I’m scratching my skin and nails but I can’t stop the noise it’s getting louder and I hear Dad’s feet on the tiles in the hall and I hear the front door pulled open and I hear the car door slamming and I hear the gates opening and another car beeping angrily and he’s gone.

The referee walks over to the striker, who’s holding his head in his hands, incredulous that he’s missed an open goal. His body curves like a question mark, but there’s no question about what’s to come. He doesn’t look up as the referee fishes around in his pocket for his notebook and writes his name and number down. He doesn’t flinch as the referee’s gnarled hand brings out the red card. He doesn’t hear as he walks off the pitch and down the tunnel and the crowd bays for his blood. His own fans too. The two mascots, Danny and Daniel, hold hands and go and sit on Mum’s bench.

I put Carrotty down and fold my skin and nail bits in the paper. I’ll hide them both again later. I stand up and my knees click but I don’t expect Mum can hear. I close the cupboard and open my bedroom door. The Spurs calendar swings around on the hook that’s meant for dressing gowns. I go past the bathroom and realise I want to pee, but I can’t, not now, not when I‘ve got to see to Mum. She’s on the floor by the bottom of the stairs, next to the umbrella stand that Dad brought back from Thailand. It’s an elephant leg and Mum hates it, but he said It’s my house too, Ella. I can’t see her face at first, but she looks up when I get to the stairs even though I’ve been really really quiet, and I’ve never seen so much blood. There’s blood all down her face and it’s fallen onto her jumper which is green, and there’s some on her skirt, which is green as well. Her eyes are swollen and her nose looks crooked: there’s red marks round her throat. I say Mum, and I’m going to cry now, I can’t help it if it’s girly, and she says Daniel in a voice like a crow. I come down the stairs slowly because I think if I race down and make a noise it might make her bleed some more. When I get down to the bottom, she puts her arm up and make me bend my knees and I sit on her lap. I’m getting blood on my face and on my Brazil strip but I don’t care and she doesn’t tell me off. He’s not coming back, she says, and we both cry.

Carol Topolski