Like the fact that they all speak French—
in this front left pocket
of an English nation’s coat.
Like the fireworks 
on Wednesday and Saturday nights,
people packed politely
all along the Quays
above Cirque de Soleil’s tent
of explosions and sparkle.  
the Vieux-Port streets stacked
with cars like a rich boy’s toy chest.
Like that the heels are so high 
and the skirts so short
you can see France if you squat
to pick up a dime in the dirt—
and Jesus looms over it all,
reaching his blessing hands
out toward the St. Lawrence,
and behind Him, the cross 
that Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve
dragged to the top of Mont Royal
to repay God for not washing 
them all out to sea.
Like here we are,
you and me,
eating and drinking and playing
and walking our feet to blisters
and listening to Violette
sing jazz she’s too young and pure 
to understand,
grateful we still like each other,
grateful we can remember life is good,
remember we were young once,
and this 
is what it was like.
                        

I. 
You call,
asking to explain
how much it pained you
to abandon me.
We meet at a bar,
order drinks.
The drinks arrive.
Before you can begin,
I drop money on the table,
walk out.

II.
Your ex stays in touch,
mostly for the mothering
he hopes I’ll give him.
When I refuse,
he feels at home.
I tell him we like him
better than you.
These days, he talks to you
more than when you were married.
He tells you everything.

III. 
You want to grow
peaches in your back yard.
A peach tree has volunteered
from a compost pit.
Hope it wasn’t a hybrid.
Hope all those squirrels you feed
go on vacation
at harvest.

IV.
At midnight,
I take a pair of scissors
and head to the feather labyrinth
you lovingly created.
The scissors are very sharp.
The feathers, their throats 
are easily cut.

VI.
Crazy doctor
divorces his crazy wife
and marries crazy you.

VI. 
New people move in next door to you.
They own a German Shepherd,
which they keep outside.
It barks day and night.
To cover the barking,
they turn the hip-hop up loud,
have weekend barbeques 
for all their friends.

VIII. 
One day,
you open your closets
and all the things you have neglected
avalanche.
                        

He was only a cyclist who stopped, 
to look back like Lot’s wife,
fifty feet from a hairpin turn
at the edge of a California canyon.

How was he to know a blonde honeypot
in the cutest little silver Fiat 
would come tearing down the straightaway,
see him standing in his shiny tight shorts
and little helmet

and lose control,
the Fiat banging through the guardrail
and arcing out in a graceful leap
like a deer, just before
the hunter shoots.