Featured Poetry

SUBVIRTUALISM IN TORONTO

Boston Blackie squirrels lecturing each other 

with tsk-tsk tails. Everything they refuse to know 

 

about Point Pleasant or Stanley Park; everything they confirm

about streetcar skeds on Gerrard. And it just keeps raining  

 

record-breaking multiculturalism. A clearing; clean slate; respite 

from more of the same. Each question mark becomes 

 

a loose noose? Or just an unstable stalemate with the usual 

Russian convict army. So every time we kiss I turn into a frog. 

 

But we keep crossing all our Ts as the City itself keeps on

teasing us, slowly stripping out of its elastic past. And you 

 

fill in the emptiness for a while, then quietly outgrow me. 

Meanwhile, the fudge on the edge of the officer’s mouth 

 

as he testifies. Consistently exquisite, all these soft cells 

suspended in innocence above the forces of corporate dorkiness 

 

until the ceiling leaks chance encounters with changeling change, 

our bodies’ minds whispering electric caress, quiet asides beside 

 

ourselves falling softly through between & among 

quick nimbus naps, aloft with all this newness. 

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