"Walking My Three-Year-Old to Nanny's Place, Easter Sunday 2017"
by Craig Francis Power

“Dank ooze, dank ooze, dank ooze, dank ooze.”
It took every hungover step of Cashin Avenue,

from the corner on Empire where once I rented
a basement apartment from a disreputable landlord, and wanted

nothing other than to sleep the clock around
forever, to the lights on Blackmarsh Road: the ground

still heaped in banks of filthy snow and shit
thawing in this, what’s supposed to be spring—my daughter’s mitts

and matching boots hot pink, against my better judgment—
before I understood what the hell she meant

by that. Took the turn toward Blackshire Courts. Climbing up the slope
much steeper than I remembered. Past the gas station, the boarded‐up shops,

the factory bakery, the empty lots overgrown
with weeds, where we could see this entire shithole town

laid out below us: the high school, the dockyards, the courthouse, the penitentiary,
the brewery, the cathedral, the mental hospital, and the cemetery.

She kept saying this prayer
right to the door

of Nanny’s low-rent dump:
Thanking the ground for holding us up.

 

 

 

From The Malahat Review's fall issue #228