Poem of the Week

You used to sit with me while I’d take a bath, til
you were about eleven, chat and count the Avon
bath beads you gave me for Christmas. I doubt
it ever occurred to you that a woman with three
kids might want a little time alone. For a while,

you’d always bring some book or magazine,
Judy Blume, Nancy Drew, some Teen Beat,
Tiger Beat foolishness with white boys on it,
the Toronto Star, the Sears catalogue, a World
Book Encyclopedia—but, you wouldn’t read

them to me, you’d just tell me about what you’d
learned, if you liked them or not—always white
pieces of blue-lined three-ring binder paper torn
and placed between the pages you prepared to
discuss. When you preferred that Shaun Cassidy

over his brother, David, I asked what coloured
boys did you like, but you couldn’t think of any,
except for Michael Jackson. But you didn’t like
him in that way. When the Beatles invaded in
’64, I didn’t like Sam Cooke in that way, either.

I remember ’77, the summer of Emanuel Jaques,
The Shoeshine Boy found dead on a rooftop in a
garbage bag. I nearly wept when you asked me
about Yonge St., faggots, body rubs, as if I’d know
how those child raping degenerates could drown

a young boy in a sink. You Scotch-taped the Star
clippings in saran wrap, careful to keep them dry.
When you said, Mom, only poor kids get lured away
and snatched in bags, I understood your insistence
and stopped reading your sisters Curious George.

Sometimes, I’d watch you watching me, your gaze:
water beads in my fro, my big boobs floating in the
fake-lavender-scented water, my pink C-section scar,
the wiry hair between my legs, like you were trying
to figure me out, like you were trying to see the future.