Night Became Years. Jason Stefanik

a rape at a bush party this past Friday

      where the accused are cousins of the reeve.

      No poem captures grief like the night

      we heard about a sister’s stiffened corpse.

      She had tried crossing, without shoes or clothing,

      frozen fields to the offices of Public Works.

      About her, in shop class, we said it wasn’t

      quite rape, per se, but more a property crime.

      A pimp-drug-dealer had traded her in

      for a wide-tank hog in need of new paint.

      Every girl knows about the warming shack

      beside the hockey rink, the hunting camp

      with tourist dollars – where no sex offence

      ends in charges. This latest rape, forget it.

      No level of policing will care one bit.

      Our teacher said the girl blacked out by the pond,

      when two bros she’d hung with since she was a kid

      told her, ‘Lift your shirt, let us feel those tits.’

      Swig-men, c. the 13th Rank of the Canting Crew, carrying small Habberdashery-Wares about, pretending to sell them, to colour their Roguery.

Advent

      I’ll follow you

      to the heat-lamp diner.

      Follow you

      to the fruitfly barstool.

      Follow you

      over wailing overpasses.

      Follow you

      to bedbug theatres.

      Follow you

      down warehouse elevators.

      Follow you

      into communal gardens.

      Follow you

      to where, with disinterest,

      we can wallow

      amid the gristle

      of food-court cynics.

      Follow you

      to visit a keen-eyed Inuk

      under a crumbling icebridge

      where we can kiss.

      We’re nine grandmothers

      removed from nomads,

      with nine beautiful sisters

      to teach us numbers.

      I’ll follow you.

Aphorisms of a Visored Paladin

      At some point you’ll finally feel the old show’s double entendre dull

      in a hyper-sexualized world.

      When the greenery was haranguing you into joining it for spring,

      shouldn’t you have plied a trade?

      If your eyes past midnight bled with metaphor and effort,

      good.

      The cat you passed up forever tingled behind

      like a war vet’s ghost limb.

      Why didn’t you, Steven, Bank Manager, friend, say life was a roll

      of receipts tallying from first credit card to below the grass?

      Those molten burps bursting in your throat never heralded

      the brouhaha before the heart attack.

      She was a Cree scoutress, quiet through wood, ear to ground,

      and I lost her trail.

      You know you raved too hard those two years in a row the Best Cheddar in the British Empire

      went to Bothwell.

      So you didn’t make the NHL – weren’t you a foot-hockey champion, who pounded home

      a frozen tennis ball at the backstop mesh when high up slot?

      You know the man of eighty-something highlighting his Bible beside you

      was you.

      The hoebag devouring pomegranates in the nightshower was you.

      Since he was one serious imam, you were one serious Orangeman when you were drunk.

      The mucked-up world, when a high school English teacher informed

      the only people reading it are poets.

      An acid-wash jean jacket with Anarchy felt-markered black

      on the back is not that bad after all.

      Rejoice for all the years Astrology.com sent you a birthday card.

      Thank God you pulled out when your diet fell to hell,

      Cantonese and creatine by the bellyful.

      Hemmed in the indigo gloam of a basement bedroom, more like a bordello

      of velvet black drapes, us trinity of Goth kids, so far gone into Dungeons and Dragons,

      rolled out our fates on twenty-sided die, and you, Steven, Bank Manager, friend,

      were always the DM.

Sister Aspires to Destress

      Sister got sloppy on Oxycontin.

      It really set our broken home into motion.

      Her basement teen-den decompressed one afternoon

      Sister and her bestie rolled a Shoppers.

      I didn’t agree with Mom enrolling me in martial arts

      when she was overcome with unspeakable woe

      and signed me on for classes in tae kwon do.

      I didn’t want to live, so what the hell:

      I wanted to go and beat someone down.

      I wanted to be someone beaten down.

      Dad hated me for not writing to him in jail. I hated

      him for not escaping to kill Stepdad. Alphonse!

      Sister got floppy on Oxycontin

      and I was gifted a white belt and crackling white gi.

      All credit to me, I snuck from the school library

      a dog-eared tome on Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee

      and spent hours each night throwing daggers

      at a backyard tree. To prep for the Tuesday I’d arrive

      at the dojo on my blue ten-speed Raleigh.

      Street-fighting, Master said, was the class’s emphasis.

      Striking pressure points, gouging eyes, kneeing groins

      was the best defence, and in twenty minutes

      my ribs cracked holding pads for the Master’s son.

      He beat me to tears in the sparring session.

      I yearned for a hole to fill up inside me,

      unlike Sister. She aspired to empty.

Night Caprice

      The blend of humour

      and humiliation,