I’m from the only part of the North that was south of what’s south of US
where business names were Italian; street names, French
where two worlds, in a staring contest across The Narrows,
blinked once a year in a Freedom Festival
where a Lancaster on a concrete plinth, in a sunken garden
returned like a Bad Penny from raining manna on Holland
where crust was thin cornmeal, pepperoni was shredded, mushrooms were canned
where Fords', and Chryslers' and GM (no ‘s’)
were already sanded translucent by Thatcherism/Reaganomics/Mulroney Toryism
where the unions slowly wasted from neoliberal mesothelioma
where, for little while longer, D-list university students rubbed shoulders
with lifers on assembly lines in the summer
where 12 strip clubs and 60 massage parlors beckoned: “come sin in our city”
where the funk of roasting malt flavoured the air
in a whisky baron’s model neighbourhood
where being this far south, but somehow still North
where the Great Society guttered, choked, drowned
where I could know its streets, its landscape, its resonant frequency
where I still feel like I came from nowhere.
© Charles Martinuzzi, 2026
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