The Long Weekend of Louis Riel

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