"This Way Out" — Carmine Starnino's ode to Park Ex

stacked outside Marché SPG,

and me dashing out the Steve's, low on milk.

God saw it was good: our fourth floor

bolt-hole with a crow's-nest view,

cigarette reek rising from below,

my paper heisted every morning,

and muezzin calls from speakers

next door. There's more: the beslippered

Greek men in wife-beaters

like off-broadway Brandos, the Syrian

barbershop brothers in all-weather

flipflops, the Dollarama shopping sprees

paid out in small change, the leaves

that rallied into piles and fought

the wind to a standstill, the spice smells,

the tea-coloured strays, the take-home Bombay,

and the half-chugged bottles of plonk

and beer I saw clear an open window.

De Liège in the morning splodged

with crash landings, brown interbled

with the dregs of lives close-quartered

in this burg, this case study in eyesores,

this last word in slumlords, this warren

of walk-ups where the wallpaper's

forever airing out its smell. Hell

or fresh start: a room, a roof, a wage.

And everyone too tired to hold out

for better. The price paid for a new story