From The Alphabet Game: A bpNichol Reader, published by Coach House Books in 2007; originally in Craft Dinner (Aya Press) and reprinted with permission from the estate of bpNichol.
FRIDAY
louis riel liked back bacon & eggs easy over nothing’s as easy as it seems tho when the waitress cracked the eggs open louis came to his guns blazing like dissolution like the fingers of his hand coming apart as he squeezed the trigger this made breakfast the most difficult meal of the day lunch was simpler two poached eggs & toast with a mug of coffee he never ate supper never ate after four in the afternoon spent his time planning freedom the triumph of the metis over the whiteman SATURDAY louis felt depressed when he got up he sat down & wrote a letter to the english there was no use waiting for a reply it came hey gabriel look at this shouted louis a letter from those crazy english they both laughed & went off to have breakfast that morning there was no bacon to fry its those damn englishers said gabriel those damn whitemen theyre sitting up in all night diners staging a food blockade louis was watching the waitress’s hands as she flipped the pancakes spun the pizza dough kneaded the rising bread & didnt hear him its as canadian as genocide thot gabriel SUNDAY the white boys were hanging around the local bar feeling guilty looking for someone to put it on man its the blacks said billie its what weve done to the blacks hell said george what about the japanese but johnny said naw its what weve done to the indians outside in the rain louis was dying its always these damn white boys writing my story these same stupid fuckers that put me down try to make a myth out of me they sit at counters scribbling their plays on napkins their poems on their sleeves & never see me hell said george its the perfect image the perfect metaphor he’s a symbol said johnny but he’s dead thot billie but didn’t say it out loud theyre crazy these white boys said louis riel MONDAY they killed louis riel & by monday they were feeling guilty maybe we shouldn’t have done it said the mounties as they sat down to breakfast louis rolled over in his grave & sighed its not enough they take your life away with a gun they have to take it away with their pens in the distance he could hear the writers scratching louder & louder I’m getting sick of being dished up again & again like so many slabs of back bacon he said i don’t think we should’ve done it said the mounties again reaching for the toast & marmalade louis clawed his way thru the rotting wood of his coffin & struggled up thru the damp clay onto the ground they can write down all they want now he said they’ll never find me the mounties were eating with their mouths open & couldn’t hear him louis dusted the dirt off his rotting flesh & began walking when he came to gabriel’s grave he tapped on the tombstone & said come on gabriel its time we were leaving & the two of them walked off into the sunset like a kodachrome postcard from the hudson bay
