FORMALLY WAVE HOSTS AREN’T INCLINED TO HELP

                                                               
                                             "You've got to see what mileage 
                                               people can get from the word human."
                                                                – Julio Cortázar,  Hopscotch (1966)                                                                         

                                                                                                   

        In line at airport Customs the young woman turned
        to the man behind her | she shrugged; the man was rose
        plant burning.        

        ü Once you’re stuck with the bloody label might 
        as well carry on, the man said; business class expects.
        So pathetic, asked to prove you are not here to comfort
        upper lip. ‘Though I could demonstrate a thing
        or two, how really stiff mates do’ | sheet spread alert,
        near perimeter wires coyote spotted.

      “The dead are so many. And they are everywhere …  
        A son found lying with his hands folded beneath
        his cheek. A woman’s corpse covered only by 
        a nightgown”  - LA Times . Ukraine Report . 04/21/22

                                                      ~                                                                 

        ü Once I saw a body with machete wounds . quiet so
         blood reigning over under | the nurse inside me ran
         away. I was fourteen. The coroner counted like 25 chops.
         Growing up I watched street carnival bands till brave
         enough I played Desperados. I want to visit Panama;
         see the Canal my great-grandfather help build.

                               / Guide ropes shuffle souls loop steps 
         distãncing. Fresh off which island flight?  they push
         sometimes you brace.
                                      Misgivings on cricket wing pick
         over passport fields. Clearance stamped, seas parting
         off you take, begin your labors.

                   / Where’d you learn to shoot like that? gets
         you notice quick. More waves than you they have
         not seen . Sunday Mondays tossing; mainstay gone.

                                                              – W.W.

 

 

         

         

 

 

 

           BUD MOLSON'S WHITE DUNCE CAP

           In this small town of a big city, you do not have
           to walk far before you run into an ex-farmboy
           willing to share with you gems of proud redneckery
           brilliant like the beers you two will be polishing off.

           You used to think Redneck was a Bad Word like Honky 
           or Nigger. But Bud Molson waves inbred biases
           and stillborn but still spastic pretentious shibboleths
           like flags, astonishing for their ragged innocence

           – innocence a warp of courage spawned by sheer terror 
           in the face of any hint of liberal nuance
           or other discrimination (another Bad Word)
           inconvenient to the rough Gentleman’s Agreement

           that life’s a Thing as stone-set as silence’s Enough!
           that thought-things be kept pressed flat

            ……………………………………………………..

                (from “Readiness” by Brian Chan, 2013)