Echoes

Grandpa records everything. His Plautdietsch
accent at breakfast orders you
to turn around, wave spoon at camera.

Back home, your parents perform
renovations: Mom slugging holes in drywall
for Pops to patch. After the car crash

Grandma plays tapes on loop
for a year. A rotten box of them
shows up blank but with sound.

You name each noise: Jackie chopping
watermelon, Deb slurping from the hose,
that neighbour’s fat Chihuahua

in the kiddie pool. It gets so you know
which season by a wavelength
of breath. Grandma laughs at herself

in the living room, drapes drawn, watching
a black box. But when he huffs, mumbles
through the speaker, you don’t blink.

•

Your bunkie has AIDS and loves a scrap. He chokes
below, coughs, lungs like a damp paper bag. The ones
he clocks just bolt. Christened Torpedo, in the caf

real quiet behind Hitler who cussed him out
for using the clippers, your bunkie winked then snapped
a hook into The Führer’s ear. He stomped the steel

gangway outside Sharky’s cell, red fists raised,
shouted I’m the king of the world before the COs
unloaded two cans of mace on him, flopped face down.

The grate engraved his gagging mouth. Milky hush
of spray stained his head. Sharky got him back,
cracked the tin edge of a food tray across

his scabbed dome, stamped him into the pay phone. Listen
to each sigh and night-toss. His skin peels the gym mat. Hear
him masturbate pre-dawn, the dry tug, reckless hoorah. Often

you hear him hearing you hearing him, hear him thinking
you never sleep, thinking you think too much. Your ears raw
from damp tissues molded in. His huffs echo through the cell.

•

Sleeping in a clapboard boathouse
on Matsqui Slough, one year out,
where wind whines through boards

worn concrete-smooth, the tin roof
rattles, sudsy floodtides pat divots
in the grey clay and muck and gulls

squawk from the dock all night, you,
awake at four AM, grind each huff
through your head, cough, mumble

in bed and scare yourself.