There’s this girl I know on the Danforth
who goes to Buffalo to shop
for the bargains on Bill Blass sheets
and with her parents to Polish nights in Orillia
where she says she wouldn’t be caught dead if the perogies
weren’t to absolutely die.
She takes her vacations in Warsaw almost every year
because she tells me the deals on crystal are
incredible and she can stay cheap with her Aunt Stenya.
It’s not like Mary isn’t into Canada, she did Banff in ’82
and drove all by herself to P.E.I. in ’84
where by the way she lucked in
to a fabulous villa timeshare in the Caymans
because thanks to God she had American Express on her.
In the back window of her Beamer with the Blaupunkt
there’s one of those Canadian flag stickers and it glows at night
I mean what do you want from her
it isn’t like she was born here.
Tricia McCallum
This piece appeared in an anthology of Canadian satirical verse called Barbed Lyres published in 1990 and edited by Margaret Atwood.
A sequence of my poems has been published in a hardcover book entitled The Music of Leaving Poems by Tricia McCallum