Adrian de Leon

Rouge Adrian de Leon

This series of poems is a response to the 2012 mass shooting at a block party on Danzig Street, Scarborough (Toronto). The city's east end becomes a source of poetic inspiration, and the intersecting subway lines provide the organizing structure. From west to east, and north to south--Kipling to McCowan, Finch to Downsview--the stations on the way inspiring form, voice, and content, meditation, commentary, and geometry. The City is the Poem.

The Discovery Walk,
inviting my well-worked Clarks
to pry my feet from the confines
of the station,
wasn't necessary to make
a most marvelous Discovery:
the bus sign, hung with steel
--from Old Mill