Megaphone Magazine: Voices of the Street
Megaphone Magazine, a local street paper sold by low-income and homeless people in Vancouver, is launching it's very own literary issue on May 3rd, 2011 at the Waldorf Hotel. Poetry Is Dead will be sponsoring the event, so we hope to see you there. Funds raised from the event go towards the Megaphone Magazine Creative Writing Program. Tickets are available for purchase online. For more information on the event and the magazine's great work head over to the Megaphone website. And make sure to add yourself onto the attending list on Facebook.
Waldorf Hotel
1489 E. Hastings
Tuesday May 3rd, 2011
8-10pm
$10 Entry
In honour of the launch we are previewing two poems from the upcoming issue by Henry Doyle and Karen Stone.
What Do You See?
by Karen Stone
When you see us, are you afraid of us?
Or are you afraid of what you see in us?
Do we remind you of human frailty or endurance?
Do we scare you because you know that society
Of which you are always to be a part
Is set up in a way that is safe and secure for you?
Well, when you are forced to walk by
Sometimes stop and really look at us.
See our strength
Our endurance
Think about what our stories are
Look at how the abused, rejected, exploited and ignored
still hold onto their humanity.
If you ever want to see desperation mixed with hope
Go to a park and listen, watch, feel, give encouragement
to the homeless.
Reach inside and see us in yourself
And if you don’t like what you see
Ask us how you can help
The Downtown Eastside Alarm Clock
by Henry Doyle
If the drug crazed screams don’t wake me at 2 am,
city fire trucks and ambulances screaming around the
corner of Main and Hastings will. Mostly going to skid-
row hotels and back alleys in this area. Cop cars prowling
the DTES like hungry wolves.
Addicts and drug dealers disappear like cockroaches.
I get up like a wounded soldier crawling half way to the
fridge to get my hangover a beer.
Putting in a blank piece of paper into my old typewriter.
Hoping to hide from the maddening stress of living and working
in the DTES as a janitor.
It’s pushing 5 am now as shadowy ravens head west down
Hastings, silently in the painted darkness, like thunderbirds
spreading their wings under street lamps.
The DTES’ alarm clock is about to go off.
Being comfortably alone remembering Poe’s quote,
The Raven Nevermore.
Looking down upon Main and Hastings from my dirty hotel
room like it could be some kind of third world.
Unpersons walking in sad aloneness with dirty street blankets
wrapped around themselves pushing their shopping carts up
the street to nowhere.
While healthy plump drug dealers in winter parkas stand
together in small evil packs keeping warm with laughter.
tags Waldorf Hotel poetry Megaphone Magazine launch Karen Stone Henry Doyle Event
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