Response to Untitled Community by Katherena Vermette

Untitled Community: A poetic response
By Katherena Vermette

I am a North End Girl,

and I’ve seen it all, everyone from my daughter to my grandmother struggle, scrimp and still barely have enough to save her soul

I have been thrown out of the Northern at 1 am, 2 am, to lay like trash in the corner of Jarvis and Main waiting, just waiting for someone, something to haul me away

I have left my kids to turn tricks on the corner, but I never go more than a block away, and I always come back in the morning

I have been hard up, strung up, beat up, held up but I can’t seem to get high as often as I would like

I am not cured, I am recovering; I am not a victim, I am a survivor

It’s a war out there you know, people are dying, women are being raped, men are getting killed, what else would you call it? All those guys, those that stick around, getting either shot or jail, or shot and jail, over and over and over

I’m third generation welfare but first in my family to graduate, since residential schools anyways

Meth is the new crack was the new smack. I’ve been light years away for years and trust me, everyone likes it better that way

And nobody cares nobody cares nobody cares and nobody is listening to what I have to say

I have 4 kids by 3 different dads but this last one’s been around for 2 years and he doesn’t fight me and treats me right and I really, truly love him and believe, I think I even believe

Yeah I took him back I love him fuck you he loves me back better than anyone better than you got jealous bitch don’t you worry about me I dish it out as much as I take it don’t you worry about that

I have a good mom, a good dad, and didn’t lose my virginity until I was 14 when some of my friends were already starting to have babies

I’d do anything for my girls, if they asked me to kill I’d get a gun and shoot ’til blood sprayed like rain, if they asked me to die, I’d lie down in the middle of Salter late at night and wait for some SUV to come blazing by and plow right over me. I’d do it for my girls ’cause I love them, ’cause they’d do it for me

I have broken my wrist twice, cheek once, twisted my ankle a bunch of times trying to run away, and my collarbone’s been cracked up so many times it just like pops out of place the moment I so much as flinch

I have my life story tattoos on my forearm, done up by Bobby with a broken bic pen and a blackened sewing needle

I have a tumour on my cervix the size of a baseball and smoke more than I should but I gave up drinking 3 years ago and never looked back

It’s not my fault, I can’t like watch my kids 24/7

And I have been doing it on my own for a long long long time

I am still here, lying in the ground, so close to the highway I can still hear the cars, so close to the surface I can still feel the sun, but I am dead, and I am red, and they all stopped looking for me long ago

I don’t remember the last time I was touched in either desire or kindness

I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know and if you really want to know - I really don’t ever want to find out

When the night’s been too long, when I get bored or just mad and cold I run out into early morning traffic, down by Aikins there where those fucking white people are going to their fucking jobs and I yell, “Hey you know you want some of this!” or something, the looks on those faces, shit, you should see, it fucking hilarious. Have to get some attention some time fuck, they all stopped noticing me there long ago

My sister and I celebrate each full moon with a drum circle and you know, I think the drum is actually making me stronger

We have victories too, the news just don’t ever show them, but we do. Some of us, everyday is a victory - still alive victory. Survival - food clothing shelter food clothing shelter and then winter. Fuck - forget about doing anything else when there’s fucking winter to deal with

My grade six class is a lesson. A small microcosm of what the North End is. About twenty of us, late eighties, so young. Now 4 of those guys are in jail, or just out, one’s this big time pimp, more than half are still on welfare, most of the girls had babies before they were out of their teens, some of us just

That old school is torn down now, I visit it in my dreams and its always dusk and red and I am always speeding, stuck in the back seat of a too-fast car revving down the back lane. I see the boys at the school as I go by, they are playing ball against the bricks, maybe Danish Rounders in the weedy field, they’re all dead now for real, I think, no that can’t be right, but it could be

And I am a role model. I have been wound up, worn out, spit on, knocked down, but I am still here

I lived on Bannerman and Charles, Cathedral and MacGregor, Alfred and Arlington, in Gig Town awhile, but hell, I got out as quick as I could

Through and through and through, so nortend me

Can take the girl out of the nortend…

Still here, still strong, I’ve seen it all and maybe, held my hands over my eyes at times, maybe blinked away tears a time or two, but I have never, not once, not for one second, turned away

another happy ending

God’s vengeance on all these
poor souls wandering
that dirty concrete littered
with old gum and oblivion
poor souls always looking
for whomever will avenge
whatever wrong they’ve done

sad girls with sorrow
carved into the lines of their faces
faces that have faced
too many sunrises

God’s wrath on those
vacant eyed children
born in the stink
raised in the stink
bottle to bottle

the pathetic elders
screaming with closed lips
crying out for someone
anyone to sit by their
wasted embers

and violent boys
hepped up on aggression
the fiercest drug they could find
playing war

but God’s most potent rage saved
for us out here
our limbs running young and naked
in the fringes of the long prairie night
while our core suffocates in God’s sweaty grip
their pushed together reality
whose only mercy is its stunted growth

God’s pity on those who can not help themselves
their minds having drowned long ago
God’s vengeance on our shameless selves
work horses with blinders
pulling the heavy cart of status quo

art piece on Jarvis and Main
 
it’s automatic this
ribbon cutting
the fine line between art
and social activism -
getting this many white people to the corner of Jarvis and Main
 
nothing here is automatic
everything is eventual
gradual
decline up the underpass
and everyone is walking
those others
those who don’t know that this is Art
not just a street
they have to get by
Main Street
North
the guy yelling out his window
the too hard young girls pushing baby strollers
the drunk who wants to be a part of the show
yes, we are all part
a part
 
but then the show is over
and those of us who can
quickly
get in our cars and
depart
 
"there are no truths.....Only stories"
                                                     Thomas King