My Sister

My sister

Her hair is blonde, wavy and soft
Well, I don't remember that -
I always thought it was brown
Dark brown
And long
And straight
(every now and then we bring out the envelope that contains her cut off pony tails from when she was 12)


Suave
Gracious
Enchanting she is.
I know
By the bunches of red roses
Flooding brandy glasses on both speakers.

She sings to me
The songs we used to sing
When I was ten
In that youthful world
Way back when…

She breaks my heart
With Vincent and Killing Me Softly
Till I am drunk
With admiration and longing
To be
Just
Like
Her.

Her name on the screen
In big letters and lights
For ALL THE CITY’S PLEASURE.

Oh, it’s no wonder
She lost count
Of all her beauty-seeking lovers.

Nurtured
In a life of horse dust and
Kittens and
Wheat fields and
Midnight crullers at Robin’s,

Yet exposed
To bloody fights
In the ring
And afterward it is appropriate to stand around tinkling the ice in our plastic cups,
A breed of existence I had not known before.

That’s my sister
The songstress
Up there playing with switches and dials and equalizer levels
And that’s Karm over there
He comes every night just to gaze at her
As I do.

Bitter cold Winnipeg
It bites and gnaws, unforgiving.
So let’s just stay at home
Tonight
And watch old Bogart films
On Roblin Boulevard
Where the ghost walks nightly, condemned eternally

What?! You mean you never heard of that?!