With The North End Poems, his always vivid new collection, Michael Knox has further honed his lucid, accessible style. In the tradition of The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Michael Ondaatje’s classic book-length poem, this at once gritty and tender lyric sequence creates a desperate but surprising narrative that’s reminiscent of David Adams Richards at his very best.
Channeling the beliefs, passions, fears, friends and fights of Nick Macfarlane, a young steeltown warehouse worker, Knox creates the kind of hardscrabble, blue collar world that exists everywhere. Benders and punchups, beaters and punchclocks, give The North End Poems the means to explore notions of masculinity in both familial and social environs. Because this is a world largely without the presence of women, Nick’s perspective takes a significant turn when he meets someone from the other side of the tracks – a University student named Carla who challenges him to think about a life beyond the north end and outside of what he thought possible.
With The North End Poems, his always vivid new collection, Michael Knox has further honed his lucid, accessible style. In the tradition of The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Michael Ondaatje’s classic book-length poem, this at once gritty and tender lyric sequence creates a desperate but surprising narrative that’s reminiscent of David Adams Richards at his very best.
Channeling the beliefs, passions, fears, friends and fights of Nick Macfarlane, a young steeltown warehouse worker, Knox creates the kind of hardscrabble, blue collar world that exists everywhere. Benders and punchups, beaters and punchclocks, give The North End Poems the means to explore notions of masculinity in both familial and social environs. Because this is a world largely without the presence of women, Nick’s perspective takes a significant turn when he meets someone from the other side of the tracks – a University student named Carla who challenges him to think about a life beyond the north end and outside of what he thought possible.
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Overview
With The North End Poems, his always vivid new collection, Michael Knox has further honed his lucid, accessible style. In the tradition of The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Michael Ondaatje’s classic book-length poem, this at once gritty and tender lyric sequence creates a desperate but surprising narrative that’s reminiscent of David Adams Richards at his very best.
Channeling the beliefs, passions, fears, friends and fights of Nick Macfarlane, a young steeltown warehouse worker, Knox creates the kind of hardscrabble, blue collar world that exists everywhere. Benders and punchups, beaters and punchclocks, give The North End Poems the means to explore notions of masculinity in both familial and social environs. Because this is a world largely without the presence of women, Nick’s perspective takes a significant turn when he meets someone from the other side of the tracks – a University student named Carla who challenges him to think about a life beyond the north end and outside of what he thought possible.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781554903184 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | ECW Press |
| Publication date: | 06/01/2008 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 120 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The North End Poems
By Michael Knox, Michael Holmes
ECW PRESS
Copyright © 2008 Michael KnoxAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-55490-318-4
CHAPTER 1
THE HARBOUR AT EVENING
Water gnaws the shore
industrial black blurring
wobbling smokestacks.
The bulk of the steel mills
and the blotting faces of men
who stand and smoke unnoticing.
Clang of industry
faint but ubiquitous
dusk has settled shadows
filling their songless faces.
Life is withstanding.
Pinched cigarettes
three beers that interfere with sleep
the dubious constancy
of wives and children
and awful fraternity
always that.
Mangy seagulls wheel in pursuit
flash of a nemesis
matching every careening
winking out of being
slips over the dock
flutters stiffly to the lip
of one of the rusted trashcans
strung along the quay.
Severe eye like a hard drop of blood
a cry like a burst of hell.
The men smoke and watch
ships tiny in their world
of open ocean, huge in this one.
Hong Kong Vancouver Cape Town
a thousand lives like theirs.
NORTH END SONNET
The city dives from itself floating half aloft.
Steel-fires beneath illuminate gutted porches that watch and think.
Barred doors and broken windows bleed the night air draft.
Waist-high weeds poke through chain-link.
Drinks and laughter on the dirt front lawn.
Knees snap pool cues in cloudy halls, splintered keen.
Glaring white kids stand in packs with open noses, then come on.
Bass buzz lopes from tinted Cutlass Supremes.
Discarded blankets weather against brick factories, skeletons of bikes.
Women with sunken cheeks and slow, squalid wrath.
Eighteen-wheelers shiver roadside weeds and houses alike.
Railway lots seem abandoned but sprout trash.
Fresh tattoos leak from ship cable arms, blood inside wrecked.
Scabbing hands quiver first of the month cheques.
ENTER NICK
Nick squints his way
down Burlington Street.
Transports heavy sprint past
rolls of steel
beds of stone
machines uncannily perched.
Things that wear men's hands.
Steel toes stump
by industrial yards.
The smell of exhaust
grey belch of steel fire.
Nick stretches a stiff bicep
drags a key through fresh chain-link
spits high over its barbed crown
into the smashed skids.
He crosses Wellington without looking
North End swagger and long stare
down the empty street
before he climbs his front stairs.
SUMMER WORDS
Meet us menacing
in the wide-skied evening
with the slap of laughter
sunset angling our squinting
bottles amber cores
in callused princely grips.
Problems and solutions
have their genesis here.
We still cut each other's hair in K's yard
wrench on bucket cars
instead of second-hand bikes
scrap with the same kids
over new nonsense
colonize the same steps
talk shit day and night.
The sound of ships inching in the harbour
dusk off the railway tracks
between houses
from dockyards
that point to Toronto and Montreal.
The architecture of our lives
in porch dialogue and sermons
in the stories we spin and believe
in the lens our talk fits firmly over our lives.
TEN YEARS
Jimmy
Ten years
dreams are ghosts
that visit with hangovers:
manic ciphers
nothing or everything
to do with her.
She's changed everything
even sleep.
He is himself
or not himself
or no one
and she is herself
or not herself
or everyone
and the desperation
of horrifying comedies
sickening offspring
of his waking.
Absence is her epitaph
a whisper
across the landscape of sleep.
WE DON'T TIP
K's eyelids are a sprawl, in a sleeveless shirt
he leans across the bar
and hollers to the barman for an Export.
Wide back to him, opportunity there
brown bottle finds someone else's tip
slides it home to K, a slow tumble
from the edge to his grip.
Smooth switch to his pocket, no metallic mumble.
He pays the barman and walks off.
"How about a tip, buddy!" met with a laugh.
Not even turning, K throws back his head,
crowing, "Here's a tip, pal: don't smoke in bed."
WALKING THE TRACKS HOME
The night tangible,
the moon large and pale
shines the rails.
I toss my last bottle back.
The shatter, a quick crack
on the rods put here by Scottish hands
connecting and creating this vast land.
Dormant houses and dark factories below;
a screen of silence hangs
over siding and brick, now slowed
the harbour whispers where today it sang.
Cheery rooms glow yellow
promise sleep still
stretching over shadowed sills.
No moon suddenly, a dream
vanishing
in a vault of steam
that connects to steel mills
cords of smoke chugging up, away
from stacks like candles that puff
over a toy landscape.
CHURCH
Spring to fall Jimmy makes the numb trek
from the pub
sometimes pauses on the steps
of the Presbyterian church
to smoke in the first or second hour of Sunday.
His great grandfather was a professor in Glasgow,
a theologian; everything he knows
has the old man hunched
in a blanket by the fire reading the Bible.
A vulture's face,
judgmental, hungering,
intense and pious Scrooge.
The fire is huge and alive,
the family quiet about his reading,
the night outside filled with God's eyes.
Jimmy's lived with this image since he was a boy
and has never tried to dismantle it,
understand it further than he does.
Distaste for religion learned from a father
who hated his guilt and its reinforcements.
Jimmy feels the nightfilled church:
its watch of steady unwelcome.
And walks the rest of the way home
hands deep in his pockets.
COFFEE ALONE
Jimmy
Sunday morning, the kitchen
a tender grey,
flutter of rain
in the trees out back
gently nowhere.
No disturbance
in the sleeping world.
This is where loss is most acute.
If she were here now
we'd have two mugs at the table;
I'd read and not watch the window.
I stand there now
try to marvel like she did
hugging herself in her housecoat
the chatter from the leaves
quiet company of mist.
I can't even bring myself to open the paper
as if I'd be ignoring
the only real traces of her.
JIMMY AT WORK
In the yard backhoes
scoop slithering stone.
Coffee cups mound inside rusted bins, Styrofoam
crowned briefly with gulls, maniac-eyed.
Cigarette butts seed a brown lawn.
The lunchroom is untidy as a nursery
fetid with sweat, dust-caked fingertips, traces in their lunches
and on nicotine yellowed lips.
Wrinkles, silvering mustaches and paunches
are all they are some days. Dignity is a vice, bullshit
that depends on diet and rest. Ungrammatical and obscene
they know they are anecdotes to the university students
new every other summer, who feign,
quick to proclaim their enthusiasm for unions,
who ride bikes home to young skin,
to small panties and blond ponytails on pillows.
At least that's what's assumed in silence.
The men smoke stonily at punch-in, like teenagers they crow
with coffee at first break, coughing by day's end
and the evening's pints of anesthetic, shit brew
a life of endurance
for ideals they were told were true.
Mistakes fathers were too ashamed not to make
propping huge machines with their elbows, fair weather brethren
joke most readily about what makes them most afraid:
cancer, retirement, gay sons, women.
BEFORE THE GYM
losing work gear
that will harden
to a knot of bark
then stretching
on a beaten mattress
the first ease
Nick finds today
he imagines
flesh into sand
into oblivion
feet then shins knees
until he is empty
for an hour's sleep
NEVER FORGET
Ronnie
Friday night's pay finds us
beers and shots between jokes at the rippers
pretending the orbits of hips don't depress us.
The hypocrisy: affirming we don't care
but spending volumes while we're at it.
K in his glory, dusting his blond head
a North End aristocrat twitching an occasional bicep.
I wonder if Jen has put Cora to bed.
Jen's ice, and like these women strutting;
it's sex I can't touch
the things I've lost before me
and guilt that I shouldn't be here.
Slipping down the rye someone's bought
I look up. I know the stripper.
Marianne something, lived up the street.
The familiarity repels me.
I wonder what happened to the baby
she dropped out pregnant with in grade 9;
if that bully who gave it to her stuck around.
The place closes and we're drunker than I thought in the parking lot.
A bouncer walks Marianne out and Nick sees her.
He breaks away from us and approaches her disarmingly
Marianne! It's Nick Macfarlane. Holy shit.
They dated when we were ten;
he still talks like she was the best girl he ever met.
I never had the heart to tell him what I knew
about her stepfather, why she probably meant
her boyfriend to get her pregnant.
People are fucked.
A Buick pulls in
I swear to god it's the same bucket her boyfriend used to drive
when he wasn't kicking kids' asses or making them piss their pants.
It pulls to the back of the lot
and I can see Marianne heading towards it.
Nick walks with her, still chatting.
The bouncer, figuring she's fine, heads back to the bar.
K's eyes get keen all at once —
he's drunker than the rest of us —
when he sees the Buick and the shadow step out.
Snarls, Fuck is that? like he already knows.
Todd Brown, somebody says.
Guy broke my Walkman and my nose in grade six,
laughed that my mom was dead. Fuck'n laughed.
Alchemy in the silence that follows, leadening his words.
You can feel hate, a vapour, rising from the pavement.
I want to say something but he's already on his way.
We follow at a couple of paces.
Nick is talking quietly to Marianne by the car.
K shoulders past, going right for Todd.
Hey, Todd. Remember me? Thumping shove against the car.
Said you'd piss on my mom's grave? Another shove.
Hands come up in bewildered apology, Todd stammering.
Hey, Todd, Scotty taunts, cracking knuckles, closing in,
you still tough?
We're all around him now. Steam of fury all over my skin.
Nick and Marianne both trying to get in the way
K head-butts Todd, dives on him when he drops.
Scotty's in a frenzy, rabid encouragement
holding Nick off with his back, pretending it's unintentional.
K punches and punches and there's whimpering.
K growls shit the whole time he unloads. You had it fuck'n come'n!
Rape my mom's corpse? Remember? Who's the fuck'n corpse now?
Marianne is bawling and pleading but it's like K can't hear anything.
Nick's voice: K, he's got a little daughter.
As though sobering, K looks at Nick,
like it's just the two of them.
Weak, abject, a little boy again.
He told me once he wanted to dig up my mom, dig her up and . . .
If you didn't have that kid,
K says, tears coming, I'd cut your fuck'n eyes out.
Never fucking forget.
DEEP
K
His body didn't have the weight I expected
he stooped slightly into my fist
the hardest thing
is not backing off
but there was hate
and hate is gluttonous
you hit him like it's never
enough
so hard something in him shatters
and you'd almost apologize
but you've learned that
there is life in this
much as anything else
a rapture in wrath
in this reptilian life
BOXING
Summer nights Nick cycles
through sunset streets
to the basement gym
on the same rusty mountain bike
he got second-hand
in the seventh grade.
Nostalgic North End fathers
pulse butch smugness
he was born into: eager
son with schoolyard black eyes.
For reluctant single mothers
the trainers become ringmasters
with carnival promises,
"Safest sport in the world!"
The mothers smile
while men just like those they left
belly laugh from the wings.
Nick skips then shadow boxes.
His trainer watches, offers the occasional
"Hitch at the waist. Hitch the hips."
Nick winks at Lincoln,
descending the stairs, always late.
Cycloning the bag to stay warm
Nick throws aggression out,
saving the rational technician.
Lincoln wears ease
spends half an hour socializing.
A flirt liked by everyone.
Nick overhears the same jokes:
"My head skips like my busted CD player,"
"You couldn't hit me with a flashlight beam."
He dances in headphones to warm up
then screams over them
"Yo, Macfarlane! Ring the bell,
school's in session!"
Nick picks headgear from the rack
pulls the moist lump of it around his head,
pumps two sixteen-ounce gloves together
and slips through the ropes.
Lincoln hasn't even got his wrists wrapped,
he sits on a bench and doesn't look once
at Nick's footwork while he binds them.
The only time Lincoln is expressionless
is sparring. The stark bell clenches his focus,
punctuates the present,
and he flies to meet Nick in the centre.
LINCOLN
Get in here, Macfarlane,
why you gotta keep my shit wait'n?
You know I'm a racehorse held back.
Baby, I live to get into it.
I want your best four rounds, bitch.
I want to taste your whole arsenal.
Baby, you'll feel me in your jaw
in the morning. And know I love you.
Fear ain't something I understand.
My hands are clean
and they burn for you, Macfarlane.
Getting hurt hurts but that's all.
People talk about this shit
like it's all fear and need.
Nah, baby, I'm a sorcerer;
you, my young apprentice.
Feel 'em thwacks, them shudders
I'm pumping into your headgear?
I'm just teasing your shit, letcha know
I'm the one doing the fucking winning.
I feel that desperation, see it in those eyes.
That wind I'm sapping out your lungs,
that strength out them stringy shoulders,
where's your heart now? How about now?
I don't even take you seriously, Macfarlane
and I can see your soul in your pupils. Fear me.
That's what I want. Feel that? Feel that?
Ooo, baby, I love it when you hurt me back.
Pray for that bell, baby. Pray.
Ain't for nothin' I'm Ontario champion.
I could hammer you in one numb crush,
deliver you like a preacher from time's grip.
K
With sand-filled dumbbells
K creates an imperial self.
Paces miles in this basement
breathing deep
between sets, nudging
spare plates on the floor
squeezing gently swelling
arms and chest,
centipedes scuttle
across the ceiling
throat of cool water
pick-tearing calluses.
His world framed
with dreaming
— feeling like certainty —
himself firefighting some day.
Consciousness laced with
starting to run,
training carrying awkward objects,
looking into courses.
It's here he believes he is not his father,
a man who let his mistakes happen to him.
HAIRCUT
K mows clippers over Nick's bowed head
with a brother's rough love
plants a callused hand on Nick's neck
steadying him and talks the whole time
like a real barber.
They leave the hair where it falls
let it mix with the soil.
Nick runs the tracks home shirtless
the breeze blowing stubble
sparks from his shoulders and arms
in the wash of the setting sun.
THE TANK
K's mud-coloured '82 Cutlass Supreme
is a wonder of mechanical cannabilism.
Pieces of cars his father's friends share,
junkers that fill backyards and garage space,
disembowelled and doled about.
The tank rolls through the East and North Ends,
faded brown seats and a ride like a great canoe.
In winter the butterfly valve sticks,
the power windows need the help of a pressed hand,
the fan is comically meek
hood up, the engine chuckles phlegmy.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The North End Poems by Michael Knox, Michael Holmes. Copyright © 2008 Michael Knox. Excerpted by permission of ECW PRESS.
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