"There is nothing new about that thirst
and that suspicion…"
- Julio Cortázar, “Hopscotch”
Even as sails hail the screens flat aluminum
sheen . clean so you're afraid to smudge the back
lit surface, soon there'll be only pixels and pimples
to remind us there exists a body you own ~ moist
walls reforming what definitions dare do . be
devil the cane groiner at row.
With so
many camera happy truth to sell is only a phone
throw away . meSelf unblocked, the copy piling
hangers on; even Stocks palm clutch live drive
the curve to market . under Run pamplona street
manners.
Left to
astonish so few resurfaced bedrocks : everybody’s
on some pitch or platform getting their profile word
spready for page ~ the end tight positions text
handlers assume.
Not sure
anymore what’s irreducible? people once launched
nude sheets of song in the shower . what lungs!
up from the bowels Glory be! vowels.
Small trace
now as much frosted glass activity beads to mist
sweat from day labor a collar ring of the past, like
rag wipes after our asininities . land lines down
wind overbending archipelagos ‒ about which
few True but views allowed.
– W.W
MARA
Mara's mother once told her that in New Am-
sterdam, the cobwebby city in which she
Was born (and Mara conceived, a second thought ‒
For second thoughts to become the child’s second nature),
A Dutchman atop a rearing horse can still
Be seen waving a whip and charging through town ‒
Seen, the daughter had thought, if you stay awake
While others sleep, or if you’re dreaming wide-eyed
While everyone else is busy still making
The sense the White horseman’s whip makes sure they are,
Making and fixing the links and crafts of time and trade,
Making promises, appointments (and keeping
Them or else! on the link-roads you must forge first)
And adding to the cobweb-spin of Matter ‒
Which, as any Dutch master would tell, is the
One thing that matters here on Earth, no matter
What stones and nails it forces you to kneel on,
(from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan, 2018)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 