Larissa Lai for Sharron Proulx-Turner May 29, 2016 playing with "why crow knows weendigo's not all he's cracked up to be" from What The Auntys Say down at the united nations train station museum with the old lady and her red hen where the mythic crow's nest incubates fledglings of many varieties the canadian pan that troubles our valences state umbrella full of holes but we huddle together beneath it soaking wet we learn to love the rain how it grows us feeds roots some ancient n some sojourning tendrilling tippy toes that bind our reconstructed love "them crows turn into hazelnuts right there on the hardwood floor" cracked crazy wide some call them filberts and old chinese lady cooks 'em into soup with a big old pork bone open-pen raised not factory farmed wan san gei tzee not so vegetarian friendly and not as filling as "a whole side of caribou and half an hind end" but nourishes still the bodies of kin kind old chinese lady arrives after the railroad's live long day head tax certificate in one hand and an old apple in the other pomegranate/durian/starfruit/ drippy mango juice peace of my heart what if our filial uncles splitting obligation to extended family way back in say yup guang tsou, hk the fragrant harbour of our holy ocean reclamation the leasehold of our opiated ching conceding to the bloody british the poppy cock we inhaled coerced from districts Meerut, Agra, Rohilkhand, Allahabad, Benares, Gorakhpur, Kumaun, Lucknow and Faizabad under British India state monopoly prepared at the government factory in Ghazipur chested and shipped via east india co means the same not past the post as hudson's bay co blows ching imperial cover at last something the chinese want: sleep what i'm trying to say is if our village uncles' feet weren't so itchy if their love didn't swing so confucian superior our curious hakka voyages might not have worked the tracks and then? if no railway if riel if no CPR troop transport from the east orienting travel from Ottawa if no support for the train or its stations might our west have ridden another way? little red hen, our hazels crack an old lady future shunt the united nations train station museum to change tracks cattle car off the rails so buffalo can roam again home again "break wind with the best of them" blow their minds alt control shift to time cracking differently as the blackrobed judge turns into a filbert and rolls across the floor thanks david bateman for showing me how to do this. thanks malissa phung, whose extraordinary dissertation takes up the "what if" of chinese canadian participation in the CPR in relation to louis riel and the northwest rebellion. sharron proulx-turner, so much love.