transcona fragments ah, good old ground tasting like invasive snow salt reeling under exhaust (no matter the cost) and don’t forget to write from the east where you will sit in a state of abandoned bliss stitched to a street that hardly knows you unpacking that metaphor the unkempt gravel or tar of a transcona side street driving with your third eye on the road splaying yourself out the side window, with both eyes on what you know that taste, that region: gravel, tar, spit leaves of glass splinters on the dream road tin am radio chevrolet and a block heater and an electric blanket and a six pack for christmas park on the frigid plain, dig a ditch round the city plunge into floodway and dream headlong into traffic as if you had the guts as if you ever had the pleasure under windows laced with the thickest frost you ramble on about the weather and the family and i’m almost lured into your language until i recoil at the irrational flash of a police search light we quickly clothe ourselves and turn down the heater and turn up the radio and pretend to be innocents with decorative smiles for the constable who was hoping for something more cinematic