Li'l Bastard. David McGimpsey

just ask you to leave.

      12. If Jesus drove a dependable family-sized recreational vehicle, He would drive a Dodge Caravan.

      Maybe I shouldn’t have highfived the priest.

      Maybe it was a mistake to fall asleep

      at the Don Ho anniversary show.

      Still, I forgave myself at Crookback’s Pub.

      I invented a laptop with cupholders.

      Previously, my sole innovation

      had been putting my hand in my pocket

      to give people the finger while they talked.

      I longed for the road and the good things in life:

      the warm breeze, eating chips while riding shotty,

      selling rifles just over the Mexican border

      to a compound of polygamists.

      Those people who say you can’t run away

      from your problems aren’t really trying.

      I left my lease on St. Lawrence Street.

      Off to Brownsville. Commence-toi la gris.

      13. My second, less popular and even less critically successful Canadian novel.

      The woman at the insurance company.

      Georgetown, Ontario. The description

      of exquisite unsaids. The turn will not

      take place in an Olive Garden parking lot.

      The male foil will disappear in good time,

      and the mister with the disfigurement

      will prove more deft with buckles. Regardless,

      he or they will not just say, ‘Eat it, nit.’

      No mitten too far, no Béliveau too

      deconstructed. ‘The blue lights spilled over

      the winter fields of Bowmanville as the night

      offered bludgeon after bludgeon.’ Sleep, sleep.

      The plot thickens when the mother’s file

      is discovered and there are hushed hints

      of New York. Just a weekend, it seemed.

      Not that she really loved John Wilkes Booth.

      14. Viva Smokey.

      Contrary to rumour, I never owned

      just one suit. I had four identical suits,

      each with a nickname: ‘Stainy’, ‘Scuffers,’ ‘Elbows’

      and ‘Smokey.’ I liked Smokey the best.

      Smokey was the man. Smokey saw me through

      nights on the couch; Smokey wrote long essays

      about suicidal poets and baseball:

      ‘Bunting Is an Art, and I Do It Well.’

      Smokey saw me through the bar on Bishop,

      where I danced to the ThelMo Wheat Combo,

      a spirited group whose name meant ‘Thelonious

      Monk may be dead but we have to eat too.’

      Not much could be won by my nickels and dimes,

      but I moaned when I put Smokey away

      and knew it was Stainy’s turn in the rotation.

      Now, Stainy. Stainy, he was all business.

      15. As my mother was always fond of saying, ‘It depends whose ox is being gored.’

      Justin Bieber, someday you will grow strong

      and then you will exact revenge for the pain

      I experienced that Halloween night.

      You know, when I was dressed as Geddy Lee.

      My novel’s now called The Mistakener

      and I dutifully watch the CBC.

      I mean, PBS. It’s not like I killed somebody.

      For my sin, I expect a pair of PUMAs.

      So long Mount Royal, hello livin’ in a van!

      Goodbye Wendy’s on Décarie Boulevard,

      Hello Wendy’s on Lamar Boulevard!

      For my virtue, I expect more thinness.

      You know what might be easier? If you

      all took turns poking me in the arm

      with a jagged lamb shank. Then, just maybe,

      I might stop to ponder your sweet ‘concerns.’

      16. If possums were pears, we’d be having fruit salad tonight.

      The phrase ‘a grey, mechanical existence’

      made me think I’d solved something painful.

      It somehow upset me to discover

      it was nonsense. I craved sunshine, love.

      My philosophical uncle would say,

      ‘When you’re old, suicide’ll seem redundant.’

      Like me, he took TV shows personally

      and cried at the thought of any goodbye.

      At some point, the blows themselves don’t hurt

      anymore. You already know you’ve lost

      and what’ll really hurt is the healing pain

      of tomorrow. Stupid tomorrow.

      When I finally left that apartment

      I didn’t even quite put on my shoes.

      I stepped on the heels as if they were slippers

      and ran to the car taking me to Texas.

II. Perdita, TX

      17. Scrubland.

      A sign for a gas station sixteen miles off

      is like anticipating a trip to New York.

      Everything bent west from hurricane winds,

      a radio tower, a flutter of starlings.

      Sun-sick, still thinking of a week in May

      when I wanted a silent treatment to stick.

      The glum, clipped calls and a waffle breakfast

      I couldn’t quite sit through. Stupid waffles.

      The gas station, of course, is just a gas station:

      trucker-sized coffee, bags of corn chips

      and local papers fourteen pages long.

      Item: San Benito Soldier Killed in Iraq.

      The Romans counselled Never argue with the sun.

      Trying to not talk, happy without a phone.

      Praying my eyes will survive the Texas light.

      Dwarf juniper, mesquite, transplanted palms.