The Maynard
Spring 2018

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Taxi

I settle in the backseat, give my address
and he says, Where are you from
in a voice that is from somewhere. No one born and raised
can do this with impunity. We zip along downtown,
the deserted pockets below Rene Levesque. I want to say,
I just told you where I’m from, I’m trying to pay you to take me there.

I’m out of the night shift, in my sweaty uniform shirt
late for the last metro, so tired of this bullshit. His face
in the half shade, a glinting watch on a hairy wrist—
it always comes to this: impervious to obvious dangers,
I’ll fall prey to sad music wailing on the radio
and to the bluntness of tentative grammar.

I tell him, Guess. He guesses Lebanese, Colombian, Persian—
something just enough removed from what he knows.
My English doesn’t give much away;
I’m not good at guessing, instead I stare at the icon hanging
overboard, the elaborate-lettered air freshener:
whole worlds sprouting around tiny clichés.

He’s an Egyptian pharmacist, a Guatemalan doctor, a Serbian civil engineer.
His wife’s at home, they’ve had the baby here:
Canadian. His daughter gets top grades in French.

He asks if he can smoke. He asks do I have children,
am I married. In this order. The city sprawls, a network of light
and darkness, with new and new shortcuts belying the grid.

When he parks on my street, he asks can he help,
promises to pray for me. For a moment, I see what he sees.
I hold out a pen, he scrawls his number on the corner of a company card.

I collect these nights, with the cards, for karma points.
You’d better be praying for me, men in taxis.
As I walk out of night shifts, as I sweep cigarette butts outside Atwater stop,
as I bow my head over budgets and ‘to do’ lists,
sometimes I’ll be a person I don’t recognize, other times
I’ll try my best, with people, or without
and I’ll think of you too, how you had your story down,
how you cut across distance, at speed, to the glowing dot of a destination.