NUDE SKETCH – 35
An author may seem to have more control than you over
The hole spectacle, but he might say you’re more a lover
Of all its gossip (limited though his will ever be)
Than its generator (‘author’ only reluctantly)
Who’s no more than a nut with a pen at her his disposal
And a blank sketchbook he could afford from a dollar-store
And the itch of a seemingly pretentious proposal
That your eyes and his conspire to explore a maze of More.
– But enough: it will never be resolved, the enigma
That marries the reading writer to the writing reader,
The one the male pollen to the other’s female stigma
In this follow-the-leader maze that has no set leader.
SKETCH – 36
Bring back Raimonde on the bus, not thinking of his foe-friend,
Mrs Frears, clawing cat with an angel’s shadow, mad bat
Whose confussing wings staggered yet moored Raimonde’s moods like gripes
To her firm dock of looking after boys, young or old, fat
Or gaunt: that mothering widow adopted extrame types
And always thought of them as boys, her boys – who couldn’t wipes
Own ass righdly and not keeps pisses insite doilet-bowl.
– 37
She used to mother even that drunken Anglish asshole
She had made the mistake (which was also good strategy)
Of mirryang only to get the right to sta yin this
Nice lonely cuntry where everybaddy leave you alone
She never couldt unterstandt dat sorts of hypocritness
With all chirpy-chirp please-and-tank-yous trowed at you like bones
To starvingk dtogk. – When she uttered so, how could Raimonde not
Trust and love Mrs Frears, despite her interfering ways?
No, she didn’t need her rent exactly on the first day
Of every month, especially since she knew that her boy
Always paid up long before its last day; but yes, she did
Need someboddy to look after and connect with
– 38
Her tribal name was Grabowaska – or something like that,
I’m not sure, though she told me more than once exactly what,
As though i needed to have her ID-info down pat
Before patting her down while helping her to learn her new
Tongue that kept twisting around her old one with not a few
Knotty results which the tongues in our mouths were too busy
Wraping around each other to iron out, both dizzy
With the more spittily urgent mater of heating up
Sex’s convection-oven – while her husband, like a pup
Who had slurped up his owner’s left-over beer, lay assleep
And snoring downstairs
(from *fatima solagua arterra’s nudes* by Brian Chan)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 