Night Became Years - Jason Stefanik

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you sitting

      on another man’s lap.

      The feeling of élan!

      To finally solve your lost pounds,

      your trumping our every debate

      with last words. Hooray, night caprice,

      hooray, pyjamas furnaced

      to my epidermis. Hooray, lust

      conspiring that bid me

      overcome my whispering

      woes and taxi to your place.

      I can now puzzle out

      the night I heard for minutes

      when you pocket-dialled me

      from your purse, and you laughed

      happier than I’d heard in months.

      At last I know without wishing

      to know, and it soothes me some:

      you keep me at the edge of town

      for when you’re older, uglier,

      and need to settle down.

      How you hold such unflinching love for him – you can’t

      know him as I’ve known him. A bony kid too sickly

      to lug his tuba home to practice. A jazz improviser

      awaiting only a single treacherous chance.

      An exasperator, a sluffer, sulking in the hull

      rather than earning keep pulling lobster traps.

      A pimply line cook huffing nitrous from Whip-It cans.

      A reeling religious erratic who fails to rouse

      his drunken uncles for midnight mass. An oily oldie,

      with the same pesky authority as a game-show host,

      insisting mumbly kids elocute their responses.

      A dirty letch, double-yoked by mere chance, to the coax

      of any pheromone-sticky tongue. A career sellout

      claiming he’s writing the comedies our city requires.

      A dull consignment and I’ll-convert-on-my-deathbed optimist.

      A flophouse violinist in flip-flops on social assistance.

      A lisping DJ on public radio with an itch for ‘S’ titled songs.

      A boy wanker busted by camera-savvy buddies

      between crooked venetian slats. A third-liner at best

      afraid of going in the corners and taking a hit.

      The type of tweaker who couldn’t last one hour

      within the Pen’s general population, and I wager

      when you hear of him again he’s already dead

      and I’m a full-patched Sergeant of Arms in the gang.

      Orst wraggles the hush at late-night bingo.

      I hate the Ass. Whereas rows of quainter fogies

      wear bifocals and blink at the number board,

      Orst wears wrap-around shades, earbuds abuzz

      with Frankie Yankovic and the Polka Kings.

      He and I share the same wobbly table,

      dabbing two cards apiece. I despise

      the way waitresses avoid us, mostly Orst,

      as they shirk bringing peanuts for his leering

      up their skirts. His meat hook rarely cups

      a buttock without a prong toward the pelvis.

      His bombast snarls across the dulcet

      professional tones of ushers inspecting cards.

      The Spaniard in the money cage, he cusses

      for peeping at a paperback while not on break.

      Over and over, Orst tells of the afternoon

      he laid the beats to a gangbanging kid

      for barring the path to a beer fridge.

      ‘That’s nothing compared to the May Long

      I brawled both LeValley boys and a junkie

      Eskimo behind McLaren Hotel,’ boasts Orst.

      I loathe the Ass until the vodka shots dry out

      his tongue. When he passes out, pisses himself,

      and I cuff a ten-spot from his wallet.

      Resale is guaranteed in that precision:

      the curb sits higher than the snowplough’s grade.

      Barely a busted trough along the roofline:

      I judge the builder by how the basement’s laid.

      How fierce the family dog needing shade

      depends whether the garden shed’s breached;

      I know the buyer by the down payment paid:

      it’s on a great piece of land – motion cams are cheap.

      I merit the neighbour by his friendly strut

      and see a cat that is not an alley cat;

      single from married moms I can tell apart:

      foul kid from holy I divine by the tat.

      Keep the door unlocked, but sleep with a bat;

      nobody clears the back fence in a leap.

      Down the street there’s a coin-op laundromat,

      it’s on a great piece of land – leg traps are cheap.

      I tell the truth for each property I list,

      whether the seller asks for it or not:

      I point to flaws other agents missed,

      like how at the stoop a kid’s cat got shot.

      I know the convict by the time he’s got;

      but moms dream well if they knit before sleep.

      No graffiti artist here will get caught,

      it’s on a great piece of land – bleach is cheap.

      Friend, for the cost of a paid tithe, own this land;

      walk with your son to where the food bank’s deep,

      all the opportunity you ever dreamed,

      it’s on a great piece of land – deadbolts are cheap.

      Palliards, c. the seaventh rank of the Canting Crew, whose Fathers were Born Beggars, and who themselves follow the same Trade, with Sham Sores, making a hideous Noise, Pretending grievous Pain, do exhort Charity.

      From out of a frost-mottled scarf, I hear Michif

      when not in the Sally Ann. For warmth I flex

      my tendons under thrift-store layers, and loiter

      as long as I can in any gas station washroom.

      I make jobs, collect cans. I keep my boots slogging

      a salty

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