Poetry

Patrick Tomasso photo

By

Katerina Vaughan Fretwell

Rococo Consumption

Frances Gabe’s Toronto Requiem:

An historian claims each Westerner

owns two million things lifelong;

cities of consumption our penultimate paean.

The Brow House – upscale store devoted

piously to plucking the perfect arch –

my self-cleaning home frees time for this?

Skincare stores galore cleanse the air’s

cluttered condo construction –

The Detox Market, Code Mode beauty bar,

or get trimmed at House of Miami Fades –

what’s Florida’s hold on barbering –

two-day-stubble on Miami Vice stars?

My Great Danes would never grace

Tire Biter doggie daycare, geared to

lap dogs piddling on pricey pavement.

Lexus too luxurious, cravings are

gratified in Collector Studio – boutique

for auto memorabilia – high-end boy toys.

For our temples, BraBar, no Babar here –

Fake Beauty like Fake News – our bodies

so bionic our humanity disappears.

O Urbanites, Frances Gabe Implores!

On the grass at Emmanuel

hobo’s snores rag a rune –

his ZZZZs over his plaid belly

reflect City Hall’s

curves, like Zaha Hadid’s oval abodes,

cupping sky-rises tickling the Church

of the Redeemer where Bloor corners

Avenue Road –

compare Church with my cinder-block:

another David dwarfed by Goliath

Towers. Dough-re-mi developers

blast heritage,

condo-ing jack hammers split

Royal Conservatory scores

into dis-sputum. O Toronto

I do love

your Hazelton Whole Foods

in tourist-quiet Yorkville –

my Great Danes grin at lapdogs

seeking saplings.

I envy the entitled accessing

TED talks. That 1871 Gothic

Revival Redeemer admits sitting on

First Peoples

while condos eat sun and stars

galleries, bistros and bookstores –

spitting them far away

to China.

Katerina Vaughan Fretwell

My ninth poetry, and art, book, We Are Malala, is coming out this spring with Inanna Press out of York University. My eighth, Dancing on a Pin, with my art, Inanna, 2015, was long-listed for Lowther Prize, was part of International Festival of Authors battle of the bards at Harbourfront and five of the poems placed Runner Up in subTerrian’s Outsider Poetry Contest.