UnfortunatelyLit By Myna Wallin
Camping in grimy sleeping bag, a woman
slumps, a living parable. Her hand-scrawled
cardboard notice: Abandoned, homeless, pregnant.
Across busy intersection, at hot dog stand,
sidewalk preacher commands from cement
pulpit. His placard, one question:
If you died tonight, Heaven or Hell?
He’s got headset, amplifier,
a Zumba instructor, firing off
sermons, close to mania, hysteria.
His rhetoric draws older couple, bowed,
absorbed in theology, inhaling equal parts doctrine
and street meats. There are always shouters
and listeners.
Instructed to proselytize midtown masses,
he gives incontrovertible
choice: Paradise or Inferno,
binary like Walk / Don’t Walk.
Days later, a scruffy man joins the pregnant lady.
Crumpled on their sidewalk patch, he erects
a new sign: Broke, homeless, hungry.
In the same spot for months. People hurry
by with shopping bags, flowers, dogs
in doggie-coats, trotting, sniffing. Sidewalk
preacher does not appear again—
called elsewhere in our heathen city.
Myna Wallin is a Toronto poet and prose writer. She has three published books: A Thousand Profane Pieces (poetry, Tightrope Books, 2006), Confessions of a Reluctant Cougar (novel, Tightrope Books, 2010), and Anatomy of An Injury (poetry, Inanna Publications, 2018). Her poems have appeared in recent issues of Carousel Magazine, Juniper Poetry Journal, The Miramichi Reader, Vallum Magazine, The Quarantine Review, and in an upcoming issue of NōD Magazine.
Why we chose this piece: We appreciated that Myna opens this poem with a soft, haunting people-watching atmosphere before shifting to more hard-hitting moments that showcase the street preacher’s hypocrisy. The Zumba instructor comparison and the parallel between heaven and hell and walk/don’t walk are top-notch.
Reading Myna’s realistic and stirring poem, “Signs”, transports me from my cozy sheltered home in Brampton to a vivid and disturbing picture of Toronto’s streets.
In the first stanza, the “living parable” of the “abandoned, homeless, pregnant” woman sets the evocative and cautionary tone. So much easier to read about such parables in print and theorize all the things you would do to help this woman but the reality of it is something else. I suspect many of us, like in the poem, walk by, praying it never happens to us or wonder how could that have happened in Toronto? In a developed country?
Also, why do I feel like I could easily be in the seedy, dark under culture of Los Vegas? Paris? London? The universality of the poem and its messages are expressive and powerful. It is a poignant and uncomfortable message that leads the reader to reflect on their values and how they are contributing (or not) to our communities.
The alarming words- “abandoned, homeless, pregnant” are jarring and remind us how easily this cycle of poverty can be perpetuated. Also, are we too busy in our digital worlds to notice the “real” world that is requiring our help, needing compassion, crumbling before us?
The part in the poem where it describes the preacher offering an ”incontrovertible choice”. Indeed, the entire snapshot of the scene seems to reflect a microcosm–macrocosm analogy where critical analysis of our binary culture could be written, but suffice it to say, the poem seems to point to how news, politics, icons, talk shows, social media arguments, (our minds at times?) are set up not to discover the truth or to support the collective good but to bolster the questioner’s arguments and individualistic selfish intentions. We often only listen to those who share our opinions.
The entire poem seems to request the reader to question their egoic (reactive) versus conscious (responsive) ideas, moral values and spiritual intentions. Further still, the poem seems to nudge us to reflect on helping our communities in some way, no matter how small. Above all, the poem’s message points to how our communities need the help from the fortunate in real time.
I am a huge fan of Myna Wallin’s moving poetry, short stories and books. I recommend you check her touching and witty body of work out! When you read her work you will see that she will have you unearthing many provocative universal truths within yourself, your families, your community and the world. She is one of Canada’s most soul-stirring and thoughtful writers.
By Ms. J.C.F. Windsor-Raja
LOVED IT! Ditto on what Ms. J.C.F. Windsor-Raja said.
The stimulating poem also points us towards anxiously questioning the meaning and consequences of modernity and capitalism. So too, the poem challenges the notion that poverty is simply of weak morality or weak character (what is the full story of those people on the street?), but of systematic economic exploitation. Superb poetry Ms. Wallin!
From the desk of:
Mr. A.M. Raja