The big move is finally accomplished, chaos ebbing as boxes disappear but absolutely no time for writing or blogging. I am preparing to read at the Sound Thinking Literary Cabaret on Saturday, as part of Voicing the City In/verse: Reading Surrey and the Super-Suburb, a two day symposium presented by Surrey Art Gallery, in partnership with South of Fraser Inter Arts Collective (SOFIA/c) and Simon Fraser University’s English Department. In the process I find myself traveling down Memory Lane. Nostalgic. Naturally.

I am a Surrey girl and the “super-suburb” is my old stomping ground, specifically Cloverdale, White Rock and Langley, back when you could build bonfires and party on the beach. We used to dig for oysters and clams too, dodging Gypsy Wheelers all the way home. I abhorred bikers and greasers, who seemed to dominate our teenaged landscape. Surrey wasn’t quite as diverse then.

Indeed we felt as though we lived on the on the periphery of Real Life, and could hardly wait to move to The City. As mighty as the Fraser is, I longed for the ocean, or, more ocean. To be surrounded by ocean. And mountains, because though I could see them, they were so far away, as distant as a mirage shimmering on the horizon.

I loved the vast, bucolic Fraser Valley though: roaming its back roads, idling on the banks of the Nickel Mackel River getting high, Holsteins grazing, once coming over to investigate, startling us with their girth, inquisitiveness, stench. We skipped school a lot, anxious to escape everything. It may have been prime farmland, but that Surrey was undomesticated, a fantastic place to grow up. Run wild.

That place-and the vigor of that place-has stayed with me, wherever I have gone, been, including some pretty mean streets. As it factors greatly into my strength as an individual, I thought it will be appropriate to share a few place poems.

 

I lived for a time on a horse ranch on Pacific Highway, feeding and watering purebred Palominos in exchange for rent. This is from Sideways.

 

SUM OF THE PARTS

 

I sit on the fence, tomboy

pondering the plight

of the eunuch,

the pinto, recently gelded.

The studs nip, nag and ride him

‘til he nearly breaks his leg

in a badger hole.

 

His altered state

spooks the stallions.

I am too young

to know the difference

but they know,

as well as any male

how heady the power is,

how it lathers beneath a mount,

how hard it is to navigate

with worn out flanks at half mast,

spurs more shiny than solid.

 

I gnaw on a stalk of flax,

spitting up pieces of us.

Body parts add up

to carcass value.

Reason enough

to detract, degrade, distort.

 

Kick gone,

the pinto cowers beneath the oak,

sunshine streaming through his skeleton

onto a plain that no longer exists.

 

Eventually I did leave the burbs and wound up in a series of cities, including Vancouver, landing in its punk rock scene along with fellow Surrey-ites Art Bergmann, John Armstrong, Bill Scherk, Gord Nicholl and Jim Cummins. This poem is inspired by my mother Corona, a Quebecois transplant who became entirely assimilated.

 

WILLOW GARDEN

 

Lazy river, bed of roses,

blue butterflies float above

black currant grapes,

leave tiny rings of white

powder on the fruit.

The willow reminds me

of our mother.

Like all mothers

she was beautiful once.

 

The kettle whistles,

her ashes upon my sister’s mantel

though Martha swears to see her

in the garden nearly every morning.

Her spine stiffens

recalling our mother’s deeds.

 

I left home to forget, remember?

To search and destroy.

I left home with a burning belief

in nothing,

including punk rock.

I have come to curse the day

I entered the surf

at the deep end of California,

the way I refused

to come up for air.

 

It was always too soon

or never enough,

but she waited

knowing I was so much like her

that river or ocean

I would not drown,

not all at once.

 

From Three Blocks West of Wonderland. This was written in 2009 so some of the cultural references might seem quaint.

 

NIECE ONE AND NIECE TWO

 

Girlie girls. Dollsome, though feelin’ fugly today.

Weed tough. Bug repulsed. Omigod.

Army ant invasion! Three in the bed,

one in her souvenir Las Vegas mug. Ewwwww.

Deep bling, shoe, handbag yens. Boy irrational.

One pierced, inked, the other not.

One smokes, the other quit.

One dances, the other won’t. Equestrian.

Determined to surmount rodeo. Reformed tweaker.

Hard. Delicate. Her sister the dancer,

if opportunity arises. Bodacious if required.

If only she could acquire status without an audience.

Super happy though! Get to chill sometimes, between feuds.

Sipping vanilla lattes, they diss rivals, friends,

 

scattershot in their skank attacks. At night a dream

flash-cards the next day’s tactics. They will not rest

until the furies within are released, Kelly Ellard fashion.

Not! Calamity Jane and Princess Pink, divergent

as sisters must be. Gems, both revealing their facets

judiciously. Grew up in haste, in the heat of battle

for custody. Struggle to make their beauty

 

marks, forever hearing they’re fat. Not phat. It bites.

Yeah. Whatever. Toil as clerks to purchase the gear.

Uggs. Mac. Little tank tops, big leather belts. Hoop

earrings. Beaded, embroidered tunic tops. Neo-hippie shit.

Fussies. Take a little taste. Gross! Toss the rest. Old boyfriend

boring, new one a bad boy replete with muscle car, death wish.

Played tiddly winkes with an ATV, maimed his little brother.

 

Lime jello shooters. Wicked! Black hotties, swooning

over Usher. Found out cornrows hurt. Itching

for the next phone call, photo op. Hear gangta raps.

Shave. Text. Flext. Defoliate. Swap MP3s. Wax. Body wash.

Flip-flop into formal occasions. Live in fear

of brown rice, lentils, radicchio. Subsist on watermelon,

grapefruit. Count carbs. Suck orange popsicles. You can take

the girl out of Cloverdale, can take mustang out.

Feed her Caesar’s salad, don’t tell her anchovies are fish. Yuk.

Take her to resorts, spas, don’t buy the travel guides. Novels.

Auntie reminds them. Check your drinks. One Vansterdam twit

pop found a dosage in her screwdriver. No. She is not

your bootlegger. Yes, she remembers what it was like

 

to be a teenager, her shock at discovering whaling, elephant

safaris. Poaching methods. Wired lab bunnies. Ethiopian famine.

Leg-hold traps. Still not certain she’s assimilated it.

Her sorrow, deciding she was complicit, could not change

any of it. Blistering convictions. Belligerent. Raging

feminist rants, picking fights in the bar, no one carded back then.

Same hair, bellbottoms. Spares them a lecture on revivalism.

Not easy, getting noticed. Swarmed, before it was called swarming.

One long semester. Revolt on the home front.

Status quo, tables upended, parental despots toppled.

Near lethal collision on Colebrook Road, crippled

with loathing. Night owl days. Pacing insomniac

seesawing up. Seesawing down.

Homicidal, suicidal thoughts

turning to threats. No one listened.

 

APPLETON

Hookah squats on carpet, Buddha-

esque. Undulating spirals of sapphire

smoke hula up her nose. That buzz.

That buzz that slows your blood,

 

calls you back to bed like a lover.

Soothes your inner asshole.

BC bud. Best bud

in the world. Worth risking jail for.

 

High-resolution satellite images.

Narcs’ warrant executed Tuesday.

Grow-op raided Wednesday.

Dozens of firearms. Five thousand plants.

 

Big bust for a small town, says Constable Cook.

For export, for sure. Cultivation facilities dismantled.

Straight people relieved. Green party over,

but Zoe cried. It was the best job ever!

 

Dope dealers pay well. Her boyfriend

sold product at school. Their responsibilities

included digging a tunnel under the border,

blaming black fingernails and muddy jeans

on dirt biking at the gravel pit.

 

Parents were shocked. We thought she was

on Facebook, chatting. We thought he was

on the Internet, with her, boy’s father chiding,

it’sAPPLEton, son, not Marijuanaton!