Three beers in, Sunset Beach, Vancouver Katherine Stansfield
Three beers in, Sunset Beach, Vancouver
I wish I had more to give you
than this Red Truck beer – cheapest
in the liquor store – and a sunset
lacking sun. You who are kind,
you who give all that is left
to those who only have hurts.
On my way here I heard
a woman on Granville Street say
there have been so many disasters
they’ve all blurred into one
and do you have any change, any heart?
We are putting the day to bed, to beer
but you long for gasoline
and brackish tides: timestamp of good days
you have to believe will come again
but on every bus I take in this city
someone is dying. Someone is dying
I tell the blue heron that swings by
swimming-capped and lanky with purpose.
Yesterday I saw my first whale
and it was everything / no big deal.
I am out of time here, out of life
and ready to walk into the sea
so you tell me about the commune
of divorced Mormons and their basement
for pleasuring strangers (always gloved).
When they’re not painting the houses
of British Columbia’s wealthy, the Mormons
listen to nineties radio, take ketamine.
We have another beer, then one more for luck,
and I mistake a seaplane for an eagle.
It’s like this, you say:
the choices we make are the choices we make.
Some streets in this city, it’s the end of the world.
Others, it’s everyone’s best days.
We leave our empties in the sand for those
who have less and that’s all the souls in all the cities now –
nine cents for a can, twelve for a bottle.
‘Three beers in, Sunset Beach, Vancouver’ was a Commended Poem in the 2019 Newcastle Poetry Competition.