After Elizabeth Bachinksky’s “St. Sarah”
I
We all grew up in northern places.
Old packing crates stolen from behind Safeway
after closing, to be smashed open
and lit up for a bonfire down in a pit.
Nothing to do but fuck and fight,
who knows what order or whom.
Feats of strength, keg stands, I knew a guy
who go high and ran through a plate-glass window.
We were all tough and angry and bored.
Sleazy indecision bred Metallica cover bands
at the Generator, the Penetrator,
crawling from smashed glass muck.
II
Grew up in a northern place, nothing to do,
but by the time the pit parties reached my ears
they were just stories, other people’s stories.
Only time I ever went near the Penetrator
was running past it at two in the morning,
with a buddy, running from a gay-basher
to a buttsex pizza joint, everthing a buck-six,
shouting faggot, faggot, until a First Nations girl,
drunk, laughing, angry as fuck, she humped his leg
and made fists, got up in his business, shouting,
hey, you want trouble fucker, I’m a lesbian.
We ran, skinny white kids who weren’t fighters,
down Fourth, past the Generator, bouncers
dumping drunk assholes onto the street.
III
I didn’t walk away from the carcass, I ran.
We all come from northern places and then run away,
all roads lead away, but I can only hope I took even a piece,
like a sliver just under my fingernail,
of that angry little fucker I could have been, back there,
like a bonfire in my chest, shouting,
hey, you want trouble fucker, you want trouble?
It’s in there somewhere, like a match in a matchbook
picked up from the Cadillac Ranch or Connaught Motor Inn.
(Source: poetryisdead.ca)
• Poetry • Ben Rawluk • link •
