Our window dress instinct placed bets on Sundays,
climbed over stare^steps to Office chair . bare
foot field memory wiped | praying no rain down
sodden the bicycle lanes, our grievances sun
pinned sheets.
The Hoatzin bird watched flood water marks on
plantation stilts, mud clearing feats : palm thatch
swap for galvanized . fixtures | landings, up looks
How paid servants steal ‘n’ hide . verandah
articles.
Coconut oil scalp scrubbed, port plank toil
rubbed; henna hands bandaged time ‘n’ again
wounds, See'f I care . that grave won’t close.
Iguanas caught ! dissembling so
gold drudgers fire up Canton sausages | between town
cars cattle amble, rope loose for the colony call
back . Goodness me! new extraction flares.
*
Tangled in mangrove
littoral not for one moment could crab trustees
imagine – beneath the ocean first aliens might
have^buried signals, property lines.
Moot now . among the wells most
bored on the planet our wishing towers | don’t
dock knock_ask . why we flail for this ? high
ebb tide balloon sail.
- W.W.
MARA + LESSING
Like father, like son is too easy to say,
But Lessing is Mara’s man who got away
With thousands of her black-market U.S. bills
Rolled tight and hidden in hollowed-out soles of his shoes
(One way to get money out of Guyana;
Another, to have crooks as your fucking-friends;
Another, to become a politician).
No, that scunt never did deposit any
Of Mara’s cash to any of the umpteen
Foreign bank-accounts she had opened up, one
For every tourist-city she had ever passed through.
(from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 