Fierce Departures: The Poetry of Dionne Brand

I walk Bathurst Street until it come like home...

I walk Bathurst Street until it come like home Pearl was near Dupont, upstairs a store one christmas where we pretend as if nothing change we, make rum punch and sing, with bottle and spoon, song we weself never even sing but only hear when we was children. Pearl, squeezing her big Point Fortin self along the narrow hall singing Drink a rum and a ... Pearl, working nights, cleaning, Pearl beating books at her age, Pearl dying back home in a car crash twenty years after everything was squeezed in, a trip to Europe, a condominium, a man she suckled like a baby. Pearl coaxing this living room with a voice half lie and half memory, a voice no room nowhere could believe was sincere. Pearl hoping this room would catch fire above this frozen street. Our singing parched, drying in the silence after the chicken and ham and sweet bread effort to taste like home, the slim red earnest sound of long ago with the blinds drawn and the finally snow for christmas and the mood that rum in a cold place takes. Well, even our nostalgia was a lie, skittish as the truth these bundle of years. 4 / Fierce Departures ...