Two Poems by Denise Sandra Kenny: Cabbagetown, Toronto, Ontario 1957;:Dream Babies

Two Poems
by Denise Sandra Kenny

Cabbagetown, Toronto, Ontario 1957

After the honeymoon
I followed him
to Cabbagetown.
He lived with his parents
at number 10 Clark Street
behind a butcher shop
where rats fed on offal
from overflowing bins.
It was small, the house, rotting
from the inside, filled
with faded 1930s furniture;
we had his boyhood bedroom,
his mattress steeped
in adolescent sweat.
His mother loved me, let me use
her rusted washer which chewed
and spat my lingerie;
I remembered how it looked
placed on my bed a month before
when friends and family gathered
for my trousseau tea.
I helped his mother cook,
made up our bed with pristine sheets,
new pillows; did the things
my mother taught me.
I thought of home;
clean, familiar –
my parents disappointed
with my choice.
We worked, had little money,
stayed at number 10
until we found a flat
we could afford.
I was 18. He was 20.
We should not have married
in 1957 or any other year.

Dream Babies

The telephone interrupts my reverie.
York University calls from Toronto.
A survey, they say, of Kingston's Public Health.
As if I know anything
about pregnancy
and fetal alcohol syndrome; as if a baby
ever sucked my breast, or a fetus fluttered
in my body for more than two expectant weeks.

Canadian writer, poet and former newspaper publisher Denise Sandra Kenny has been fascinated by words since childhood. Encouraged in 1979 by renowned playwright John Herbert, Denise has spent the last three decades honing her craft. Her work appears most recently in the anthology Art’s Buoyant Felicity (Evolutionary Girls Publishing, 2010).

Copyright 2011, Denise Sandra Kenny. © This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.