The East Side of it All. Joseph Dandurand

      Nightwood Editions

      P.O. Box 1779

      Gibsons, BC v0n 1v0

      Canada

       www.nightwoodeditions.com

      cover design: Charlotte Gray

      typography: Carleton Wilson

      Cover Image: Elinor Atkins

      Nightwood Editions acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council.

      This book has been produced on 100% post-consumer recycled, ancient-forest-free paper, processed chlorine-free and printed with vegetable-based dyes.

      Printed and bound in Canada.

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Title: The east side of it all / by Joseph Dandurand.

      Names: Dandurand, Joseph A., author.

      Description: Poems

      Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2020021232X | Canadiana (ebook) 20200212338 | ISBN 9780889713802 (softcover) | ISBN 9780889713819 (ebook)

      Classification: LCC PS8557.A523 E28 2020 | DDC C811/.6—dc23

      this book of poems is dedicated to all of the missing

      This Is My Path

      We close our eyes when a junkie slips by us on a freshly wetted sidewalk as the city tries and tries to wash away the odour of those who sleep beside the walls as if they await entry back into this castle where all the food is kept.

      I have been up and down the streets of this city and I never close my eyes as I wait and accept it all as the drunk Indian brother pisses himself, the weak just keep doing their thing.

      I walk on, into the centre of hell and here I am greeted with a smile and she asks me for a cigarette. I give her one and she almost walks away with my lighter.

      All I can see in her eyes are the days of abuse, the childhood she never had back home. She looks at me and smiles knowing I will never hurt her as we both blow smoke out into the centre of hell.

      As the sun sets and the moon rises up into a clear dark night, the streets move slower as the day people lay down for a few hours of restless sleep and the night people start their rounds to search for whatever it is they need and the junkies are quick to score as the dealers lay in wait for them to change money for drugs and then the drunks of the night are already two bottles in and they puke it up and continue on as the working girls and boys stand on the corners trying to appear beautiful. To me they are, as I can see their pasts and in them I can feel pity as they get into a truck or a car to do their thing.

      A few hours later the corner they stand on is holding them up as the drugs focus on their minds and destroy the horrors of their lives. As all this is going on, the moon falls a bit as the night is almost done and the sun creeps over the edge as if watching the east side and making sure it is safe enough for the sun to come out and light the sorrow one more time.

      The First Day

      When I was five I was put on a bus and sent to Catholic school not unlike my mother who was five when she was put on a train and sent to residential school, both feeling that gut feeling that this was not going to be a place we would like.

      My parents told my older sister to watch over me but she had long ago grown to not like me, let alone protect me.

      As we waited to go in that first morning a group of boys decided they did not like my brown skin. The biggest of them came at me but I was prepared as I had already been beaten up when I was four, again because of the colour of my skin.

      So the big kid and I scrapped and soon the sisters were on us. We were sent down the hall as all the other kids and their glorious uniforms went down into the classrooms to begin their first day. The big kid and I were told to stand against a brick wall and the main Sister Superior of all the sisters told us if we wished to punch, then punch the wall. So we did. As my five-year-old fists smashed against the wall and soon blood formed on my knuckles and the Superior smiled and praised the Lord. She told us that was enough and I kept swinging as the big boy cried and said he was sorry. But I wasn’t.

      The sister again told me to stop and I threw one more punch at the wall for her and one more for Christ who the whole time stared down from his cross. And that was the first day of my time with the Lord.

      Muddy Waters

      The rains wash the moment away that I would stop if I could, to be a moment of silence for the ones we lost this year.

      We buried them across the river. There they rest with our ancestors. Now the river flows by them and today the water is a muddy brown.

      We used to place our dead in cedar boxes and put them in trees. The missionaries made us take them down and bury them in dirt.

      We knew we certainly did not come from dirt. The missionaries would sing songs from the good book they carried around and we would cry as we covered up another relation from the sky.

      (If we could, we’d dig them up and lay them in cedar boxes in a good tree up high.)

      Still the muddy waters flow on as the rains wash away our tears. And we burn plates of their favourite foods for them. Sometimes we add a cigarette or even a can of beer to quench their thirst.

      As we put our brother to the ground all the eagles begin to circle overhead. We know they are the ancestors who fell from the sky. One eagle dives and takes a fish from the muddy waters as the rains fall from the sky where we all at one time began.

      The Silent Scream

      In the crooks and corners of the city you see humans bend over, or they are already bent. They walk that way down the alley and some look like snakes slithering in and out searching for a white powder or a piece of black tar. They search and search, come up for air then dive back down and bend their spines to the point of snapping. They do this all day until they fall over. If we were to look down from the sky we would see them left behind, fallen, as the snake that embodied them found them no longer worth eating.

      There are those who talk to themselves and we listen to these great forgotten prophets as they speak the truth about this and that and they sometimes scream to make sure we are listening. Then they stop