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Morgan Elizabeth
Radio
By Morgan Elizabeth
One of our songs comes on the radio. That
melodramatic drone of 90s grunge. Mumbled
tones float, I smile a familiar hello. I remember
playing DJ in the Parkdale Harm Reduction room.
Your eyes lit up, you realized
this unexpected connection. A love
bridged generations.
Now, in my car.
As the flannel-clad singer hums on, I sing
my unintelligible rendition. I wonder, if,
somehow, you’re somewhere, listening
singing along. A pinched look, I can’t
remember what your voice sounds like.
They echo though, those few songs
you’d play over and over again.
That fuckin’ Oasis album I couldn’t
stand. It took me 3 years after
you died to admit I don’t actually like
Nirvana. Even now, as Cobain’s voice goes on
I defiantly speak out, as if you were next to me.
Sorry babes, I can’t stand this shit.
The dial clicks, a new voice enters, our visit
is over. For now
Life as it is right now.
Morgan Elizabeth, May 2023
Everything in this poem is true.
The morgues are full, rented refrigerated trucks hold our loved ones.
Some, we never knew their full names, yet we loved them all the same. Beautiful souls handled like butchered slabs, who, to many, were just
junkies, crackheads, homeless drifters, social castaways…
To us, they are dreamers, revolutionaries, artists, sacred children of the divine
deserving of heartache, comfort and praise.
On us they left marks.
Yet, many have grave-marked-less legacies
without good endings, or funerals.
People die in batches in the downtown east.
Agencies resort to collective memorials,
there’s no keeping up with the demand.
Each month there will be multiples to mourn.
My heart is heavy with ghosts I’ve lost count of.
How many fill the silence of my mind now?
15, 20, 30… must be more than 50 by now.
Each not a number but, names, memories, idiosyncrasies.
Soft-spoken Cuz, an insightful man, created Knock-Knock Naloxone.
Vinyl door stickers signaling people prepared with vital medicine…
Cuz died of an overdose, alone in a shelter hotel that resisted his life-saving creation
as people were forced into solitude with no. god-damn. real. plan.
Into the depths of silent deaths and unspoken sorrows.
Firecracker, red curly-haired Charlie, who really missed being a mom
died post-incarceration, when no one in the apartment had Naloxone.
A failure in discharge-planning incited franticness
leading to another fatality from systemic negligence
in this overlooked genocide.
Mayor Tory came to Angie’s memorial.
The audacity of this asshole sitting there, in our hand-crafted sacred space
mere publicity under goodwill’s guise.
I’d suck his dick, if he could tell me anything about Angie beyond drugs and destitution.
Dare him to clench the mic and speak of her humanity and the reasons we love her.
Among the usual pictures, food and flowers,
Tory sat there: mouth cinched; hands clenched; eyes forward
knowing he passed policy after policy that led to this very day.
We gathered in John Inn’s Community Centre
close to the “revitalizing” Moss Park
where, a few years back, bloomed a thriving community.
Countless lives saved, in tents, then a trailer… and…still a tent so people could smoke.
Better than blue pipe-pressed fingers collapsed on sidewalks and parking lots.
After we filed from the ceremony,
on the snow covered land, by our barricaded barren park,
we spread tobacco and said prayers,
knowing we were speaking to more than Angie.
To those who die alone in: alleys (Carl, Princess)
public bathrooms (Crystal, Andrew)
squallared squats (Leon/Pops)
Each loss folds into each other
With the weight of stacked ghosts, it’s no wonder,
I’ve seen countless glazed eyes of our people, good people
pinhole and fade. I wish I could change political apathy
with the heartache of my community.
Have them really hear the echoed Banchy sobs of my kin that fill my head,
the cries of friends seen more times at funerals than for fun
and let it be enough.
We can’t keep going on like this, yet we do. To surrender is to be
another casualty in this war.
To those who want to annihilate us: Fuck you. I refuse to bow to your ill-given burdens.
To those with upward turned noses and blind dead eyes:
It’s time to get off your horses, riding high,
This shrine to those who have died as a result of the drug toxicity crisis was created as a part of Clay and Paper Theatre’s annual Night of Dread project in which participants create shrines to their fears. This shrine is an expression of the fear “all my loved ones will die of overdoses (and related causes)”. The addition of related causes such as mental health or poverty (lack of access to adequate housing and health care) is a reminder of the intersecting nature of crises.
The central figure is a skull needle and barbed wire halo. Other drug paraphernalia decorate the shrine with the hopes of reducing the stigma of these objects by bringing them into an artistic space. Names of community members’ dead loved ones mark the outside to help keep their memory alive. A grim reminder of the unrelenting nature of these tragedies, the outside of the shrine is running out of space to add new names.
Artist bio:
Morgan (they/them) is a gender queer front-line community worker who’s been engaged in paid work for 10+ years, with a primary focus of harm reduction in Toronto, including at a safe consumption site. They now work supporting people navigating the grief, loss and trauma related to the drug toxicity crisis through their program Radical Intersectional Grief Support (RIGS) . Advocacy and activism is always at the core of what they do- mainly drug user liberation and anti-homelessness work. They’ve been a part of Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), Toronto Harm Reduction Alliance (THRA) and most recently the Harm Reduction Advocacy Collective (HAC).