“Construction at the corner of Oxford and North, March 2023” by Sasha Pickering (First Prize Winner of Joyce Marshall Hsia Memorial Poetry Prize)

i.

I wake up at a rare time and see
the sunrise in ridges, pink and rippling
like the ones I lick on the roof of my mouth.
The same ridges that rise under my feet
as I walk the wet sand on a tidal flat.
Mourning doves and crows chat softly as I rise.
Yesterday, the backyard held a pigeon convention.
Hundreds of city birds perched
on the few mature Maple Trees.
The overflow crowd had a pool party
on my roof, stomping away the snow
and sending it past my window.
When they left, they pulled the mask off
silence — fresh, red, and tender.
Slowly, the hum returned.

ii.

I can stand at the corner and count
the posts. I can lose track of rectangles
before the light turns green.
I can hold my hand up to the grid
and see it all between my thumb and my first finger
you know, just google “hands holding moon.”
I can cross the street and imagine
the right angle of development falling towards me
and slicing me in two.
Perhaps to look at the bones of a building, I too
should show my skeleton and feel the wind
through my ribcage.
This reminds me of the house that crumbled
and fell into a crane, did you see it?
I call this “heritage house resistance.”

But this is not that. I regret the geometric rising.
There are too many vertical lines interrupting
innocence.

And this is where we take our trees?
In treated two by fours, stacked on top of concrete
platforms — a new horizon line.
One construction worker
and one pigeon,
on level four.

iii.

Decay grows a complex patina from old
air on the surfaced underbelly of rock.
They say arsenic has no smell.
This grid.
This tiny cinema.
Floor after floor they build up.
Not just a building, but a brilliant campaign
of hardening freedom with fun(ds)
and ignoring the facts: everyone needs a home.
Funny, then, the name “Mosaik Properties” when the walls are gray,
firmly obscuring the view and
whispering clouded air around the neighbourhood.
What is it then,
what is cemented into place
while rigid metal bars split the wind?
How odd the rain looks berating concrete
before settling below the blast
of a new statism.
A fusion at work, uniting dust fences
and rat traps. What is this new yellow?
Not pollen. Just plastic