Why, I asked, is it called crack?
Because, my brother began, a smile on his facelike the smirk of a scientist explaining the solar system to a peasant
because it crackles when you cook it up and suck itin snap-crackle-popthe smoke swirls,
the pipe’s so hotyou burn your mouth(the hotter the higher the faster)
because it gives you cracked lips
because if you smoke too muchit smashes your heart to smithereens
Because it breaks your life into beforeand afterthe first inhalation
when every complication falls away.It takes ten seconds for the pleasure-flood of dopamine to drown the brain.Flood of no return.The ship splinters openspills the little white rocks
Again the patronizing smile. How handsome he is, silk boy amongst gangsters. Smooth. When he speaks he is half-devil and all hunger.
It’s still years before the years in prison whittle down his face.
Give me...
Karen Connelly is the author of nine books, including the recent memoir Burmese Lessons: A Love Story (Random House, 2009), which was nominated for a Governor General’s Award in 2010. Her novel of prison life in Burma, The Lizard Cage (Random House, 2005), won Britain’s Orange Broadband New Writers Prize in 2007. Her forthcoming book is a collection of poetry, Come Cold River, which includes “the breakfast cereal of his youth” and many others set in Calgary and Vancouver.
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