Least when you expect . under the whush whush
of helicopter blades . into the gravity! duck, step.
Sparks from sun scorched grass leap . only
the shirt damp on your faith never once doubted.
In the desert you might hear whispers 20 miles away,
something on its way | don’t go metrological at the wind.
You dig a ditch you slice a worm it does a twin
shimmy . still processing.
A newspaper folds . what’s left for you to swat
Read Only flies.
The phone screen light middle of the night vibrating
fibril disquiet No no no! assembling
Trace with scull oars ice break aways . polar end
plates | floaters sky stares; bubbles at sea mark dares.
– W.W.
QAT
*SPEAKING of which, Qat can tell you of teenage
Zillah who, with her Christian parents, fleeing
From Beirut via Sicily, had been sent
By Canadian government sensitives to try
To live in Didsbury ‒ where, feeling indeed
Done-interred, she exhumed her corpse, getting it
Pregnant, shocking her dad’s heart to its last thump.
Gloom, guilt, despair and other self-punishments
For a few seconds’ surrender of her sex
To a roué kinder than her own parents
Were what Zillah really brought to Qat’s desk at work (and,
More than once, to Qat’s kitchen-table) under
The pre-text of a plea for help in finding
A sleeping-space beyond her widowed mother’s.
(from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan, 2018)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 