GROWING UP PERPENDICULAR ON THE SIDE OF A HILL

in a house hammered into a hill hanging over

the Humber Arm I grew up and watched the cargo

ships come and go without me through spring

summer autumn winter and watched Ro Carter

open the shutters on his store where

everything you ever needed could be bought and

listened for the mill steam whistle announcing

the hours and disasters always whistling

and at sixteen I left 7 Lynch's Lane Corner

Brook Newfoundland and I've been leaving for

more than two decades never staying anywhere

long enough to get to know people well enough

to have a fight an argument even and perhaps

all this time I've been running away from

Lynch's Lane where I lived a soap opera with

no commercial breaks and grew up perpendicular

on the side of a hill

with Gordie Gorman whose mother one Christmas

gave him a hunting knife with a blade like a

silver bell but Gordie Gorman refused to carve

the turkey and hunted through the house with

one clean slice down to the side cut off his

penis instead and was rushed to Montreal where

it was sewed bach on though neighbours said it

never worked right again and Gordie Gorman

said only I wanted to see how sharp it was

and Francie Baker who spent a whole year in

bed just woke up on New Year's Day and said

I'm not getting up this year and day after day

just lay in bed reading the newspaper and

looking out the window and she always waved at

Cec Frazer Macky my brother and me when we

climbed the crab tree to watch her

and Tommy Stuckless the midget who we all gave

nickels to do hand-stands and somersaults and

was fierce and cranky like a crackie dog and

ran off to Toronto and became a wrestler

and Mikey Bishop who stopped everybody on the

road flashed open his black overcoat never

without it want to buy a watch hundreds of

watches pinned to the inside of the coat the

only thing ticking about Mikey Bishop said Cec

and Bonnie Winsor who rubbed herself with

coconut oil and lay on a red blanket in her

underwear like a movie star between sheets of

tin foil toasting in the spring sun and

sometimes smiled at Cec Frazer Macky my

brother and me hiding in the tall grass

watching her turning and cooking like a

chicken on a spit and we asked her if we could

take Polaroid snaps and she said yes but by

the time we saved up enough money for film

summer was over and Bonnie Winsor's brown body

was hidden away for another year

and Bertie Snooks who joined the army got a

haircut flew to Cornwallis and was run over by

a sergeant in a jeep without meeting the enemy

even before he completed basic training

and Sissy Fudge who was the smartest girl in

Harbourview Academy and could have been a

lawyer or doctor or engineer but had her first

baby at fifteen and almost one a year for the

next decade or two like a friggin' Coke

machine said Macky

and Janie Berkshire who built a big two-story

house with her husband Pleaman and the night

Cec Frazer Macky my brother and I carried and

dragged Pleaman all the way up Old Humber Road

and Lynch's Lane from the Caribou Tavern where

he sometimes went after prayer meetings at the

Glad Tidings Tabernacle Janie Berkshire threw

Pleaman out the new plate glass window and he

fell two stories buried in snow and Cec Frazer

Macky my brother and I hid Pleaman in Cec's

basement for the night and Janie Berkshire

painted the house magenta and raised three

daughters and served tea and walnut sandwiches

at weekly meetings with the women of Lynch's

Lane but wouldn't let Pleaman Berkshire or any

other man in the house again

and Denney Winsor whose wife ran off with an

optometrist and Denney started lifting weights

in order to beat the shit out of the

optometrist but enjoyed weightlifting so much

he shaved all the hair off his legs and chest

and came third in the Mr. Corner Brook

Bodybuilding Contest

but for all my running away I never escape

Lynch's Lane like the weather always mad

spring under a moon always full bonfire summer

autumn ablaze winter without end the hill

where I grew up perpendicular