Night Became Years - Jason Stefanik

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Transit Stop

       What Am I?

       When Whisky-Jack Didn’t Want to Heal

       Plains Ballad

       At Logan and Keewatin

       Letter to Leonard Peltier

       Go Long, Boys

       Notes

       Acknowledgments

       About the Author

      Before I present the reader with the following primer of Beggars Cant, I think it not amiss to premise with a few words on the nature of Beggars themselves, by way of historical consideration, of the antiquity of the former and the universality of the latter: for though Beggars are found in all countries alike, they are not in all countries alike, their nature and genius being diverse in proportion to the countries in which they stroll, as now it is affirmed that they effect equally the countries where they rose and of those through which they pass.

      –A New Dictionary of the terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, In its Several Tribes, of Gypsies, Beggars, Thieves, Cheats, &c., by B. E. Gent

      Strowlers, c. Vagabonds, Itinerates, Men of no settled abode, of a precarious life. Wanders of Fortune, such as Gypsies, Beggars, Peddlers, Hawkers, Mountebanks, Fidlers, Country-Players, Rope dancers, Juglers, Tumblers, showers of Tricks, and Raree-show-men.

      Never are your nights this long, body entombed

      with exhaustion, mind ensnared in a mesh

      of pixels and elusive pinwheels of REM.

      In the pleasant ether of neither-nor, with sleeplessness

      past your book’s yellowing font, your dust

      and rancour of lust and conflict,

      and the nauseous popple of sleeping pills, to a space

      where darks are deeply black, lights deeply bright,

      and you’re ardent in the gills of your distant past.

      A madrigal hummed by a mummer choir

      mimics the lapping of waves on sunken

      blocks of limestone. With an acorn under your tongue,

      you watch backyards careen across the rungs

      of oily current. You’re holding on, encouraging

      an unstudied, somatic dull, for you feel

      the night is special, feel the compulsion

      to prolong your dream the duration

      a daemon can possess a candle flame.

      Don’t come. The pictures are fake,

      Photoshopped stock foliage. This is the land

      of the ruthless usurper. It’s hard to crowbar away

      the hooded upstart jimmying the bathroom window.

      I live here, don’t come. I’ve murderous nieces

      I’ve not yet met. A whole birth family, social workers say,

      who’re bikers, boozers, free-basers, bums. Even Mom,

      I’m told, drinks away our taxes in a lakeside teepee.

      If you come, someone will smash a window of your camper van.

      If you stay too long, your nights will lengthen with pain

      like a housecoated family watching their home burn.

      You may feel the touch of love, yes, temporarily,

      but by dawn you’re found hog-tied in a garage.

      Neighbours suspect it’s drug related. When news breaks

      you’re also in a cult of FAS, the cops

      downgrade the case. How tauntingly severe is this place

      when you come – we’re hand in hand down the lane,

      wind taking us toward the searing white sun.

      Unfortunate Traveller, where have you been?

      I’ve known a chunky kid with humped back,

      laggard and ah-shucks shy, shuffling

      amid a gang zone while intoning a psalm.

      Unfortunate Traveller, what have you heard?

      I’ve heard the whispers of children in the aisles

      while they discuss the crowded plight of the crabs

      bound by rubber bands in the tank at Superstore.

      Unfortunate Traveller, how does it feel?

      It feels like booths of widows and widowers

      swallowing their life’s pain with red velvet cake

      in the stale light of a late-night dinette.

      Unfortunate Traveller, were your senses keen?

      They divined the old cat who doesn’t want

      to see you cry, who won’t meet your eye

      before you take her to the vet to get put down.

      Unfortunate Traveller, how deep the seeing?

      I saw the love as a girlfriend recalled James, dead

      this year of AIDS, and who, though a bullied gay boy,

      asked her as his date to their high school grad.

      Unfortunate Traveller, did you find the way?

      I came to starlings in a thorn bush, asleep

      by an airport fence, watched sun-vaulting silverfish

      blazing atop the wave tips at Winnipeg Beach.

      Unfortunate Traveller, what did the signs say?

      They showed a small girl still pure enough to ride tall

      on the back of her mom’s wheelchair through the mall,

      their faces twinned with love as they dodge and palter.

      Unfortunate Traveller, where did you stay?

      In an ice-fishing shack with some rough farm kids – glad

      they traded in their shit-kicking boots for a pack

      of Zig-Zags – using Red River jigs to fiddle and fish.

      You turn off at an unfamiliar bend of road.

      Silence is not forgiveness but stupefaction,

      like an essay dug out of a messy desk

      before a snide teacher and unfriendly class.

      I know, another poem about rape

      in our small town, but in school they’re

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