a brothel run out of an apartment (high-rise on Eglington

those places were asking to be busted, basically, the neighbours

don’t like it); I only worked there a few shifts, later

I saw it in the paper

but for some other crime thing

it had a fountain with no water, a Grecian sculpture

verdigris bowl and circular driveway

cracked, plants grown over. I want to say
the owner had rabbits. I want to

say that but it may not be true. The room floats

not so much hazy as a blown-out photograph

whisked in front of my face repeatedly as I try to glimpse

a cage on the floor

in front of the window/balcony? Hexagonal wire? A cloud of fur?

And an idea

that there was a baby or babies (human ones

that is), rather than an image of it/them, was this
this apartment, or some other? Trying

to get to the truth

of images like this, it doesn’t

get you anywhere but the itch, once scratched, hard

to leave alone and you think (little addict you)

this time (maybe) you’ll get through…these images

I can no more control when they come as I could

the impulse to take that first drink

a hallway arrives
and a room on the right, a futon, a man

in a checkered jacket, oranges and browns

a gold necklace snaking in a nest of chest chair

acne scars along cheekbones like cordilleras, musta
given him my number because later we’d meet at his donut store

and he’d drive us to his house in Scarborough

(his wife visited her mother on weekends)

pictures of the wife, mermaid-long hair and flawless

almond eyes, why would he cheat on her with me

I thought, and felt embarrassed about

that aspect? (Yeah I know); this man
one of those who liked to tell me how much money he had

pull out hunks of silver and gold, shove watches under my nose

gesture at dining room table candelabras; affix

dollar amounts. His low-roofed house cluttered

as a tchotchke emporium

he never tipped me

and often counted out the last ten in loonies and toonies. You

are the best

he’d tell me…for sex

and with that pause there, every time, I thought maybe

meant to be half a sentence

e.g. You are the best, for sex, BUT

no good for x, y, z…?

But he never added anything so maybe
just mantra/reassurance: that I was money well-allocated

the best product at the best price. I

smiled and laughed (of course). This may have been the extent

of our conversation. He liked

to sit with me in the donut store before we went to his house

wanted his employees to see me

he said, for them to know he had a mistress

(if they thought he was paying me that was fine too

I think, maybe better, not sure), well

they didn’t appear interested in anything their boss was doing
one time I showed up in a leather jacket I’d found at

Kensington Market, totally funky, oversize with square pockets

motley like peeling paint

or desert topographies

he went straight to the car (an SUV, I want to say beige

a flash of beige coffee cup holders; is that real? was that

this SUV?) well

he motioned for me to get in. No mistress of mine
he said, should wear rags like that. I felt red and hot

arrows and pinned to the seat, mumbling apologies

into my lap. I hated

to displease anyone, especially in person. I had fewer
problems with disappearing however, so later I stopped

answering his calls. The whole rigmarole

as I saw it, took a lot of time, and he only ever paid me for an hour