• Toronto the Good

    Karen Solie

    Fall 2019

    Six-inch all-caps in the third-floor window
    of a low-rise on Sherbourne. HORRIBLE LANDLORDS.

    STAY AWAY. THEY TREATED US LIKE DOGS.
    A plague cross on the door:

    “Lord have mercy upon us.”
    Why don't they move then.

    You know why.
    If you don’t, you should.

    Rent for those apartments wed to flakeboard,
    caulk strip, mactac, plastic,

    and a maintenance philosophy
    of who gives a shit,

    for the ill-intentioned microsuites, the bug-ridden
    and the windowless,

    has doubled in two years.
    I loved it here.

    Even the stodgy Upper Canadian Presbyterian
    architecture, the terrifying...

    Karen Solie’s most recent book of poetry, The Caiplie Caves, was published this spring in Canada, the US, and the UK. She lives in Toronto.

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