Expedition

We stare at each other across the table for ten long minutes,
eyes swerving up and down each other’s faces,
picking at rows of forehead creases,
digging up signs of
smiles around the mouth,
frowns around the eyes,
and I wonder what I’m looking for
and whether I’d notice if I found it.

Coffee arrives and words follow,
no better than the silent scrutiny of those long minutes,
still wrapping themselves around foreign tongues
and prying up the corners of think-out-loud talk.
I do my best that day,
I dig through you for hours,
but when it comes to flags, I am still colour-blind,
can’t tell red from white.
Later that night,

I go down without a fight.

Apologies to Elizabeth Bishop

My mother’s voice: “bring a watch, lose the keys;
love isn't a door, but something too hard to master.”
I have lied next to rivers, filled with the lovely art of disaster.

the way down

look.
I am weighed down
by a tangle of directions that just
show me back to my place
like a movie usher with a chip
on his shoulder and a flashlight I
will use to brain him.

I can’t seem to explain
this map with my fingers.
they get lost around the
curves of roads and parts
that are grey water—
no, grey land—
no, that’s water, I
think. I’ll have to
explore
it with my feet;
toes know the way
to the water.

I will plant my feet
in the ground,
root around,
look for a buried road sign or
disoriented tourist,

drink twelve beers and
drive myself home.

Re: Klein

the kind of girl who lies in fields
in the brown and brown of early spring
with a tingle on her tongue

well I mean we are meant to be
alone or whatever, or apart or whatever

the kind of girl who lives like she’s dying,
every moment precisely savoured

alone or whatever, but I never understood
that twenty year silence. what a waste

the kind of girl who lies

of talent. I’d say time but
that’s a waste anyway

incisive and minute,
in fields in the brown

no matter how you slice it,
I mean everyone knows that

and brown of early
spring alive and
dying by the moment

Obituary

Podesco, Anan
At birth. First child of two desperate
people, beloved brother of no one;
no sibling will ever come along to be
wondered at and imagined by. Left
this world too soon to have a home.
Soon to be followed by a mother who
was destroyed by the pain of being
torn open and finding nothing inside.
Mourners are asked to reserve their
condolences until the second funeral.

The body at the bottom

I took the stairs two at a time to the body at the bottom.

Her hair was alive under my hands as I brushed it away and looked into her eyes. Something of their light seemed to linger around the edges, hinting at the heartbreak that had burned there. I remembered damp lashes clinging together in fear, begging desperate questions of me. How I had known, then, that my heart had hardened against reply. It gave way now, ran with a red trickle around her temple towards the arc of her ear, escaping my absent ministrations.

Three steps up lay an empty shoe. It burned my fingers as I read the ripples in its sole, scanning stops and pebbles from its frequent journeys. Tracing the heeled curve, letting its pitted edges teach my fingers, I read the message it had left me. The twin had cut deeply into the soft underbelly of the floor, three steps down, five seconds ahead. It held no sign of remorse for its insane departure, violating the deepest bonds of right and left. No stockinged foot had abandoned it; the separation was justified.

Under my nails I noticed some of the living hair that had crept along with me, unnoticed, flashing its coy smiles in my direction. Unable to resist such promise, I rejoined its sisters in the carpet and we spoke to each other in lover’s whispers. One laughed of a tickling brush against her cheek, another of a windblown sting to her eye. Several spoke of how they had intertwined with impassioned fingers and felt the exquisite pain of their pull. For days we whispered back and forth, until I swam with their secrets.

Alive then with this golden glow, I stepped carefully over shapely leg, past immodestly hiked skirts. Delicate fingers beckoned to me to return, but I knew them well, knew how they had lain curled around neck and shoulders, grasping flesh as if possessed. Having finally gained that sweetest of silences, feeling the lick of it coil expectantly through me, I raised myself up, up, and flung shut the door.

Words' worth

And though the poet weeps his lullaby
on the bank of the Thames,
the waters rush to their own song-
broadcast through static to the human ear;

If I could hear like birds
my books would hit the river.

Micro

I read things in your eyes like writing on money
too tiny to see
too important to miss

Gutterhome

The shortage will be divided among the peasants. –Proverb

I am the glory that drips from bitter mouths,
smokes butts from the street,
kills strays.
Rain pounds my flat and painted surface,
engenders sporadic stubble,
drifts grime.
Insolent hymns resonate through my waste lands,
ciphered with screeching hosannahs,
silent cursing.

Emblazoned with a dead man’s name,
I am steaming black sympathy,
cold change.

Behind a lifetime crust of processed cheese,
between stains in faded floral print,
humming seafoam,
worn fur seeps years of sordid stench,
exposes overflowing flesh,
sprouts scarcity.

This runner is cut down foot and knee,
bleeds white and octagon red,
absorbs lead,
and lies motionless in a rotten orange glow,
exhaling centuries of gutterhome
into the endless night.

Obituary

McGavey, Maureen
Self-inflicted, Sunday night. Another
sad story of rearranged flowers and
thirty-five cycles of servitude. She left
behind three darling children: Davey,
and some girls. Loving husband of
fifteen years, wrapped up in self and
secretary, didn’t see it coming. Failed
in her duty. Jesus came that she may
have life to the full. Funeral service at
Saint John’s. No flowers, stones will do.

Obituary

Pamarov, Elias
A hundred years if a day. Drew women
and their looks for the better part. His
lovely wife Alana, five children, twelve
grand-children later, not one with his
name. Liked to play golf. Distant older
brother to one lost soul lying under the
monumental ocean, and a girl who slept
away 20 years of pain. Long estranged
from others. There will be no viewing;
he was always destined to burn.

I want to collapse into one

.........I want to collapse into one
single instant the headlong rush
of all the trailing half-smile talk
that cast itself through me.
..........I want to know and forget
the play of hands across my skin,
their prying game of touch-and-retreat
with the left-behind lines.
.....................................Bright child shadow,
sweeping across my face like a sun-set smile,
snapping time into seconds,
..........I want to run, hate-blinded
through hazy old streets
and seize your face in my hands.