FATIMA ARTERRA : CONTRAFICTIONS

       

      NUDE SKETCH – 04 

                                 i'm now a plant bearing a disease
      That’s dying to kill me ‒ and i wish i could get away
     With tha told joke about the dizzies called living, but mine
     Is an actual heart-‘imbalance’ that, like Susan’s can’t
     Be re-centred – that simple, but hard for even this me
     ‒ Who swallows other ‘scientific’ fudge whole ‒ to digest,
    Or try to undersand.    I believe it’s complacated:
    Since a fellow doctor told me so, i must beleave her,
    ‒ More so since I pay her to service my more-or-less corpse
    Which continews to hurt up here and down there, yes there, ow,
    There, you got it

 

              SKETCH – 05


         But i'm healthy enough to be lazy enough to not
      Take too seriously the Complain’t ‒ or anything else,
      Finally.    I confess:    at (flat) bottom, at (failty) heart,
      I’m a ‘hopeless case’ ‒ what’s new?:  When i was 9, i could see
      That the diffronts between 9 and 19 and 99
      Was a matter of days and hours made up of me reseconds.
      Now that Dr Wotzernutz tells me i have even less
      Seconds to look forward to, i sense a sigh of relief
      Undernearth the sporaddict stabbings of pain (here, there and,
      Yes, there, higher, down a bit, that’s it).   Call it layziness,
      If you like, but i no longer feel the need to man-age
      The rest of my seconds

 

                            – 06 ***


          But i trust i’ll wake up in the morning and start again
      That business, this business of plotting that, preparing this
       And promissing or projechting the other ‒ all those plans
      Which, as the joke goes, make God laff ‒ with lafter not unlike
      My own when i look in a mirror at a skull dolled down
      To a joke of flagging skin that both cornfims the vision
      Of the boy of 9 ‒ and belies it, since what he could not
      Envisage was himself still breathing from behind the mask
      Of a 69-year-old grin more grossume than any
      Completely unmasked skull’s.     Yes, sagging flesh and thisease not-
      withstanding, the half-blind 9-year-old survives

 

           *** But, Arterra felt, the writer’s impulse as a ‘garden
                   of forking paths’, then became locked to the cage of Progress
                   with its opportunism stunted by Attention-span
                   as quik-fix resolutions from Hemingway for Dummies
                   to digital distractions, the bastards of the English
                   mistrust of ideas as empire-unfriendly – in contrast
                   with French or German ideationality as mid-
                   wifing the ongoing birth of breath rehearsing the stars.
     
                                                   – Lissana Cesare-Ábusem, PhD

        (from *fatima solagua arterra’s nudes* by Brian Chan, 2015)

 

 

NOW . LEFT OF CALL TIME

 

          
              Not even the driest humor could jook! make humour 
       shrink; über less in terra stages every last ‘n’ first
       time . act the beaver faith retriever.

                                             Runways at forest edge oblivion
       strips for our departure ? forgoing all the blood we let
       angels restart ~ Merci, cellTower ~ particles of odor vie fly
       here there encrypt in screen swipe nowadays.  

                 Some air shows like Sahel dust propel face
       touch infinitesimal; it matters you don’t think until
       solitary the viaducts choke . migraine shields mock Hope
       you’re happy now.

       Clam shellfish types set up mausoleum webs . in stuff
       their resumés ? like Egypt pyramid relic wraps to carry on
       over.
                          Who D’cries box burial ? grounds not fit
       for hair loss care; get the Premium Conditioning package
       all that permutation . closer to home Economics, don’t
       presume après the sky falls.

                                                                   Knowing nothing
       knocks to wake you for the gate sleep keepers, why
       bother ? schedule post Op ash Wednesdays.
                                                                                      Flat
       line order the Fin d’oeuvres : ask the Cloud play All
       Season standards / Dig in! / taste what the wiped plate
       rim secures . at which point ? what could go wrong.

                                                            – W.W.

  
     

        

        
        LESSING 

        Stepping out of bed, he yawns, stretches and bows
        In the Sun’s direction, ironically at first,
        But next, not so, his blood rushing to his head,
      Pressing him to transmute his gesture like base metal
        Into the gold of genuine surrender
        To the outer gold acknowledging its twin,
        Reaching off the varnished floor to his bare toes

        Whose feet are suddenly flooded with a need
        To affirm their actualness by springing
        To a rabbit-like hopping around the room,
      As though racing to a point of goodbye to themselves,
        And, hopping, Lessing feels the fascia under
        His latest skin flapping like a gusted flag
        Dying to be freed from its skeletal pole.

        (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan)

 

 

 

FATIMA ARTERRA : CONTRAFICTIONS

 

        NUDE SKETCH – 01

     WE ARE TOLD that Wisdom helped to set the sought/foundations
     Of the Earth.   So why not invoke Wisdom to emerge here,
     At the start of this world, this odder dream?    Trouble is:   i
     Am no wisdom-wand god.     For one, i have no wisdom-teeth,
     Nor have ever had:   they never put in a twopairance,
     Never turned up, never sprouted, though I do remember
     Sore back-gums in my youth.   Susan, my last wife, consouled me
     that a lack of wisdumb-teeth did not necessarily
     (She liked staggering spanner-in-the-works words like that one,)
     Denote folly.   Would I rather be as long in the tooth
     As i was elsewhere short?     (Ouch!)   Often her words flagged themselves,
     Through her jestures of raised eyebows and a shrug, as a joke,
     A jovial javelin of revenge for all the pain
     I caused her by assuming we were both enjoying life.

        Another way of looking at our joking together
     (I was no better than Susan at not having to joke)
     Is that our jokes were like planks being nailed onto a frame
     Slowly that way becoming a bridge, one we more and more
     Needed between us ‒ before it turned into her caixão

 

      SKETCH – 02

        Will this record, of the kind of hajj i never dreamt i
      Would ever make, itself shrivel into a limping joke?
      But lame or not, as crutches, my jokes are a humorist’s,
      For l-imp-ing along the Serious Way, i tend to want
      To burst into laughter.    Or call me a mere absturdist
      Who can’t help seeing the vanity of all our buzzing
      Effarts ot climbing this or that molehill of ambition.

                   – 03 ***

       Should you, testy reader, need to tag such talk ‘pretentious’,
      I’d suggest you either throw out this book or, grinding your
      Wisdom-teeth, rip this page out and scrunch it up or mail it
      To the Onfire of the Minister of Forein Offears.
      But if you entertain these case-studies just as they are
      In your hands, they may dekidney a laugh or two, or more,
      Who can tell? – not only jokes but also less ambitious,
      Non-threatening notthings that have no pretentons to be
      Anything but what they are:    myrages (all records are
      Fictions) in a dessert with oases of detached smiles
      Here and there, even if only your smiles of indullgence
      Of the mush-rooms of my prolostly superfishy jokes
      Spored by an arrowgaunt childishness ever on the verge
      Of oblivion’s edge where the blindest child starts to see.

                                  
                                  
                            *** Behind that zigzagging 'style' loomed the polemical bent
                                   of a self-styled ‘Art-terror’ claiming her right to disrupt
                                   what she called the régime of too purrsuasive [sic] fictions
                                   with persuasionist detours of her own tangenital
                                   [sic] forays into angles and corners of reflection
                                   which the anglo-novel’s wayward seeds (like Fielding, Defoe,
                                   E. Brontë, Melville and Poe – and not excluding Milton,
                                   the Brownings and the Dante we know from bald translations)
                                   took not for granted but as a right of trust, an aspect
                                   of their relationship with their readers
                                                                         – Lissana Cesare-Ábusem, PhD 
                           

                 (from *fatima solagua arterra’s nudes* by Brian Chan, 2015)

 

 

MESSAGE IN THE BOTTLE : OCEANS WIDE TURN

 

              
          Earth seeded, desire sluices . mountains heave new
          lava flow . first time in years, more so. 
                                                                 Raise the water
          mark too high gondoliers glide elsewhere, leaving you
          measures of naked decency to take . ashore blame
          mix messaging; clean dry fountains instead.

          Just so you don’t feel always the inflatable one . hand
          reach back like run receivers / pivot, grip / sinews
          in curve sync you’re working together seam less
          at this . end to chase after.

          Not there yet doubt free limbs keep the beast . mobile
          that’s how time strips the argument down there ~ Non :
          oui Intime ~ barnacles for the life of you; our freight
          break swept to sea viabilities.

          Floor to moon . shoot yearning ! like keyless
          entry, ‘long as you’re close enough ‘n’ firm, trust
          the spool / arc, send / mesh that passing Great night
          whale . the spout thing bottom feeds ~ mind whet
          mate folded ~ disappears.
                                                               – W.W.                        

             

           

           

         
           LESSING 

           For there behind her, in profile beyond her
           Narrow cell's window suddenly grown wider,
         Is the shadow of the face of a man listening
          To the bliss of her tilling her own soul’s soil
          So that he, her man, might know how to tend it
          Whenever she’s ripe for a true husbandman.

          Or perhaps the man’s just waiting to become
          Her necessary nuisance, the disturber
          Of her fantastic powerful privacy,
       With his powerless facelessness insisting that she
          Sketch in its features as recognisably
          Human, and that she alone underwrite his
          Book of fabulous risks and resigned crossings.

           (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan)

 

 

FATIMA ARTERRA : CONTRAFICTIONS

         
         
         UNTRODUCTION – 01


       I recall her saying that her sketches would be ‘crude nudes
       for lewd prudes’, by which she meant to counter what she believed
       was a warp in written and graphic works of Western art,
       to cinemise or gossipise the force of womanhood
       with figurations of a flaccid femininity.
       (Such terms herein obliqued are lifted from her diaries.)

                                             

 

                                  – 02

       
                                                                 Hers was but one
         of many cases of delusio Caligaris
         identified in treatment-centres, and given import
         in professional journals and conferences, throughout
         the 1990s.    What was, till then, a rare condition
         (first drawn attention to by a Dr Fritz von Harbou
         in Berlin in 1927) seemed overnight
         to mushroom, along with an epidemic of rampant
         somnambulism, throughout immigrant populations
         of the unsettled and settled tribes of the entire world.

            Simply propounded, delusio Caligaris is
         a complaint which may assail a mental patient after
         immatisation in a therapy-facility.
         The condition involves her slowly coming to believe
         she is directing the functioning of the institute,
         rather than being but one of its inmates ‒ among which
         group she is likely to seem a kind of chameleon,
         or at best its most suggestible member, with leanings
         towards solacium potestatis (otherwise known
         as ‘consolation-controlitis’: vide Agressive
         Defense: Control-Freakery in an Age of Cowardice
         Codified, Berne & Hyde, Pentagoff Press, L.A.; p. 2)

            Such tiltings within the psyche may lead to the splitting
         or diverting or, in extreme cases, sheer postponement
         of personality as identity ‒ a syndrome
         indicated by Fatima’s anti-fiction sketches,
         as she termed them, that conjure two male stand-ins for her self

                                   – 03

 

          For all its extolling of the miracle of Woman,
          Fatima once scrawled after one session with me, Art shrinks
          the feminine principle to mere fuckability
          ‒ an outrageous but understandable claim by a ‘bitch’
          who had spent all her adult life as an overworked ‘whore’
          within what was then mainly a man’s field of faux-pursuit,
          that hunt-scent perverted (or ‘male cross-stitchery’, as she
          later called it) to Certifiable Accountancy.

                                   – 04

               Being put out to grass from their ‘field’ became her first stage
          of fertile depersonalization.   This I treated
          for eight years (before her suicide).    In treatment she seemed
          far from delusional:    mild-mannered and soft-spoken, her
          slightly ironic lazy-lidded gaze suggesting none
          of the incoherent anxiety usually
          displayed by depersonalized megalomaniacs.
          Yet it was the same Fatima (but was it?) who would mock
          our one-to-one sessions with hummed sentiments like With you
          I rule creation or I’m sitting on top of the world

         UNTRODUCTION – 05


                                   And once, without a trace of irony,
         she offered to write me a ‘nice’ commendation towards
         my next job ‒ as an auto-mechanic or cleaning-maid
         (a ‘slip’ revealing her obsession with self-revision).

         Less kindly, she was once eve/adamant that very few
         women give a fuck for the minds of the men who fuck them
         and fuck them over ‒ and over (Fatima had no faith
         in the promises of the Sexual Revolution);
         that they are no different from men in not giving a damn
         for the different feeling-mind quiddity of their not us

 

                                   – 06


          Arterra distrusted the cages of realism,
          with its verysilimitude [sic] the strangler of dreams.
          Thus, for example, her near-blind bookseller is given,
          in all his unlikelihood, as a presence in her ‘dream’,
          a figure of entry in her ledger of no account.

              We must also not forget that Fatima Arterra
          ‘sketched’ in a so-called foreign tongue, having picked up only
          English scraps while growing up in Angola and Macão.
          Those scraps, dismissible in a world of business-numbers,
          are less ignorable for their influence on the near-
          glossolalial utterances of her word-sketches
          – an idiomatic strain she called a distant cousin
          of the Pole Conrad’s trick of reviving great bad writing
          whose snakes of sentences undermined the ladders of Taste
          by empathically echoing the complexities
          threading the inner/outer magic-bag of consciousness.

 

                                  – 07

 

             A more detailed analysis of my patient’s complaint
          is not intended here:    these few lines are proffered only
          as a layperson’s guide into an orderly-seeming
          mind’s mazelike detours of which its unrevised ‘sketches’ are
          ample examples, evidence revealed only after
          Fatima’s sudden death.

                                      Lissana Cesare-Ábusem, PhD, ASPUC

          (from *fatima solagua arterra’s nudes* by Brian Chan, 2015)

                                                  
                                        

 

TOOLING AROUND IN FANCY

         

           You have no idea . base wounds hand sewn 
           up link to muscle mind . through glass tower
           shafts, cross acres of crop cut : till hills of lush
           sweat slope away . cane row precision saved.

           Vaulters gold bricks in mortar pound . reign
           serve : *Password*  Go sieve the world.
                                          Swipe a trace on any slab
           face on security grid ~ trip hunt fortune keys
           catch ‘n’ release . cell riffs in marrow.  

           Whose bare worked back side steps right off
           so stainless time rims pass ? touch unwanted.
                                All wheels! emission metro grade
           Circle up! old village roads boot tracks ~ bird
           wings love bird baths ~ horses wonder spur.

           The evening wait of island trees ! the brace
           North as wind tight panting benders ~ galling
           gestalt! ~ audition over . splayed roof sheets
           galvanizing, bamboo shoots repost . who that
           swishing candle ? Erzu, I so glad to see you, gyurl.

                                                          – W.W.

 
       

       

          


  

           QAT

           *IN DOAULA (where she’d learnt shit meant also
           Ab$tract dollar$), Qat used to chant Christian Rap
           In cafés and markets, and still conjures up
         A good-Old Testamental retribution-picture
           If you get her good-and-pissed, outraging her
           Sense of decency and l’il faut de Justice:
           Pour tel, elle se connait votre moyenne, mais
  

           *TO OTHERS, she beams an ‘exceptional light’
           (Her boss’s term for her ‘performance-presence’)
           Of hope to the puzzled polymorphs she has
         To lead through the purgatory of this afterlife
           Called CaNada with all it kindly demons
           Of indifferent incomprehension matching
           Its new inmates’ need for instant empathy.

 
               (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan)

 

THE FLAGMAN’S OCCURRENCE WAVE BAND

       

        < Situations and Revelations of Passing Notice in Guyana >

         Locket #50:

        
         So now I’m thinking: if my mother had a problem, it was waiting for the right
         man to come along. Looking out at the possibilities in Georgetown, few
         seemed qualified. There were men blessed with more muscle than mind. She
         associated ‘muscle’ with required labour, like fortune hunting in the forest;
         and ‘mind’ with talent and city hopes.

         Her husband, my father, was a labour type. He laboured in the civil service
         and in the bedroom. He died of a stroke which she blamed on his compulsive
         labouring, and the quantities of food and drink he consumed.

         She worked at our public library. Books and quiet and minds growing. She
         shushed loud visitors and rowdy students. She was gracious with men who
         came up to her desk and made enquiries in soft voices. Who noticed how
         attractive she still was, but said nothing

         She shelved, she took returns at the desk; she liked reading new fiction and
         making suggestions to the Head Librarian, about what was suitable or not
         suitable for young readers.

         But her focus was raising her only daughter. In the eyes of others she was
         a quiet, generous soul. I did not let her down.

         Like her I valued people who liked reading and for a long time I was friendly
         with boys who spent energy on books and had impressive grades. This meant
         we spent our time together talking.

         I abstained and abstained which required much labour. Going from school
         straight to her library some afternoons, doing my homework there. Going
         home together where we ate and I did house chores. I might dip into a new
         book for the shelves.

         You would think by now I know exactly how and what to do in intimate
         situations, but I haven’t opened up myself yet, and I haven’t found what
         best suits me.

         About my father, we talked only once. I mean, talked seriously. My mother 
         confessed ‘love’ had little to do with her decision to marry. At the time
         he had dreams he’d be sent abroad one day to work at an Embassy. She
         came home from her job and dreamt of moving away with him. Means to an
         end, if you want to think that way.

         When she calls me here in New York asking, What’s happening, she’s itching
         to know if I’ve fallen in with the wrong labour company.

         I told her I wasn’t ‘dating’ anyone. The word ‘dating’ has little meaning for
         her. She didn’t have to remind me to focus, not to ‘stray’.

         I told her I had settled in the basement of her sister’s home. I could find my
         way around now. I signed up for classes. Classes cost money and ‘studying’
         here could take longer than we’d imagined. I had to take a job, but I knew
         my boundaries, and I was managing okay.

         Then the other day I got this letter from her.

         Normally between us it’s email; or a weekend phone call with questions and
         news. A Georgetown envelope with Georgetown stamps was unusual. It was
         followed quickly by email telling me not to leave the letter lying around;
         someone might read it.

         There had been a development back home.

         She'd met someone. A man from Martinique. He had wandered into the
         library during a book donation event. There were no empty chairs when he
         arrived. She found one for him. He seemed curious, at the same time a little
         lost. 

         I could see her standing there, wondering if more chairs might be needed for
         more late comers; curious about this late-comer, and drawn to his accent.
         When it was over he seemed to know no one in the room.

         She said she'd had dinner with this man. In our house.

         She didn’t explain how this happened, just that it happened. One minute he
         was a stranger at the back of a room at her library; the next he was sitting
         at our dining table.

         How could this be? How could the person I’d known all my life, a person of
         quiet authority, allow this to happen?

         There was more: this man had insisted on preparing the dinner. Something
         special. Like nothing my mother had eaten before. It required a trip to the
         nearest market.

         My mother didn’t care much for our public markets. She preferred the super-
         market. Things were neatly arranged on shelves; she had her list. He wanted
         to see our public market.

         I was left to imagine the dining event: the table set, glasses, the wine (We
         can’t have dinner without a glass of wine, she said he said) the napkins.

        They must have talked and smiled and listened to each other; a little fuss
        now and then, wondering if everything met each other’s liking. His ease and
        familiarity, telling her ‒ he must have noticed ‒ how very well she’d kept
        herself over the years.

        Everything in the house must have taken on a new glow. Pictures on the wall,
        the furniture. Her tone of voice. We had no dogs or cats, nothing to breeze in
        with sniffing interest.

        At around eight, maybe nine o’clock, they might have moved to chairs in the
        living room. No, he couldn’t just shake hands and be on his way; though at
        this stage what more could he offer to do?

        I could see him making himself comfortable (in my chair), waving away a
        stray mosquito. I could hear her speaking with pride about her daughter,
        away in America ‘studying’.

        In the presence of someone with dinner-cooking skills and a stranger's accent,
        she might have pulled back the covers, hoping again to be admired and taken
        away. Oversharing. Not listening to what she's saying. Glad someone is there.
        in our home listening to her.

       All those years with her, in our home, swept aside by some late-arriving thrill.

        The last time she called our conversation was brief. Along the lines of, So
        how is your new sonic toothbrush? I listened for signs of continuing
        developments. I didn’t want to appear too concerned or curious so I didn’t
        ask about the “Pierre” from Martinique; about his age and occupation, for
        instance.

        Some change had taken place, oui! From the moment of ‘let me help you’ in
        the library, to that evening, ‘let me cook for you’ in our home. I combed
        through the letter for clues.

        So why the fuss here? which sounds like I’m overreacting? over imaginings.
        Well, some things might sound like imaginings to other people.

        Something is slowly sinking in: the beloved only daughter is no longer all
        that matters in her mother’s world. She’s far away, she's out of range. She’s
        still expected not to ‘stray’.

        I can’t stop wondering if the letter was meant to set me free to act in ways
        I’d never acted before. No longer bound by home rules or expectations. And
        if so, what happens now? how should I move on? I mean, what would happen
        if some stranger with dinner-cooking skills were suddenly to cross my path?

        This is where I am at the moment. I just felt like talking about it.

         Desiree D.
         Georgetown, Guyana
         New York City

           

 

EVERYONE LEAVES . HAPPY END COMING

         
  

           Pole positions some kind lean . keel in the course
           of our rolling grasp about; but a hands street lift
           off seems guaranteed providing you're not alone, left
           haltered . fade in hospice layers.

           If only beams could flight globe plan : night till ray;
           our bracing as wheels touch faith scorch land, breath
           blue burning : It’s Ok! part angels clutch . ride 
           sigh beside you.
                                   Such fear ! to stare, reach with.

           Terms cum deed knock wedges clear out of even; feed
           numbers swell . last offer sits on the table growing
           cold the longer favours hover corks and chrome
           fork over.
                           Into stars vast, work ‘n’ rest heaps ~ swan
           knife dives feel expected.

           For pluck good feathers revel game, lovers weigh
           caveats like lobster . claws reminding us nothing is
           given that wouldn’t be taken . back snap! next
           red turn around \ Aie aie aie.
                                                                         – W.W.

               

           

 

          

         QAT WITH CHARON  

         *BUT The world IS bigger and here before me!
          Qat once shouted at Charon, her nègre rouge
          Of a cancre who had just dared to suggest she
        Fooled herself by kneeling scared below the world’s totems.
          Qat could forgive Charon for talking funny,
          Et après?, but she did not intend living
          With some pimp who refused to honour his pute.

          She held no delusions about her active
          Rȏle in keeping Charon and the world alive
          And kicking ‒ Charon and therefore the whole world ‒
        Which does not, as he felt, start with a soul’s latest dream
          Of it, but had A-start, world without Z-end:
          She was born Catholique and he was born blind.

             (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan)

 

 

THE FLAGMAN’S OCCURRENCE WAVE BAND

 

            < Situations and Revelations of Passing Notice in Guyana >

            Locket #49:

            Waiting to hear from my friend, Simon. I think he’s dying; for all I know he’s
            already moved on.

            He lives in the Northwest District. As fate would have it we met by pure
            accident in Georgetown. He was here “seeking justice”, only to discover
            that without money or friends with ‘connections’ an Amerindian with
            only 'innocence' is lost. I wish we had known each other earlier.

            We in our early sixties. Among the lucky ones, not physically
            “handicapped”, having to rely on family and relatives. Nowadays you
            can’t afford to even look old and feeble. Helter skelter don’t always see
            in time slower limbs crossing the road.

            I have a son who has grown and moved away. Simon as far as I know has
            sons and daughters.

            His eldest son, Matthew, came to town one day, and was stopped in the
            market square; punched and forced to hand over his phone, his gold chain
            and sunglasses. Poor fellow, he didn’t know where to turn.

            He found his way to the police station in Brickdam, where they asked    
            jokey questions and told him to wait. He waited. When waiting felt like
            humiliation he left.

            From that day I swore whenever Simon came to Georgetown he wouldn’t
            have a problem not knowing where to turn.

            I went with him to the Georgetown hospital. He was in a battle with his
            body. A quiet, private battle. Internal problems, let's leave it at that. I
            didn't press him to talk about it, and I don’t want to make it everybody's
            business.

            He invited me to come visit him in the Northwest. From the sound of it he
            has a nice little farm.

            When he came by me he looked around and I could see questions in his
            eyes.

            I can bolt my doors and rest in reasonable comfort. I have a dog and
            friendly neighbours; to date no real problem living by myself. He seemed
            concerned. What might happen if, for instance, fire break out and hip hop
            from building to building. Or if flood waters creep in the yard and start
            rising.

            Well, it’s the best I can right now, I muttered, answering his thoughts.

            This last visit to the Hospital, he thanked me for the hours I waited with
             him.

            The lady at the desk in her tight bossy clothes told us, “Kindly have a seat
            over there,” the doctor would see us eventually.

            Eventually stretched on and on. Now and then her cheekbones tossed
            unkindly looks our way. Playing her little dominance game. Just waiting
            for anger and frustration to break out on Simon’s face.

            I wanted to jump up and raise hell. Other people turned to each other
            grumbling, You see what this country coming to? Dog house. Collar and
            bone in the dog house. It wouldn’t have helped. Besides, I didn’t want
            to make Simon an object of pity, unable to fend for himself. I put aside
            my irritation and joined him in patience.

            After a stop at a pharmacy I suggested we go to Chinese restaurant.

            Two elderly gentlemen having lunch in a fancy restaurant. An odd pair,
            yes, in a room of table linen and chairs. Not the regular snake charmers
            taking lunch break from public office.

            Simon was wearing blue denim jeans; they didn't look tight at the waist
            and droopy. Where you get those pants? I poked at him. Who you think
            you are? dress up like that? “They feel comfortable”. They should dress
            you that way when you die. “You know, that is not a bad idea.”

            For dinner I’m sure Simon kill and cook plenty snakes, birds, all kinds of
            fish, iguanas, duck. My letter-sorting fingers couldn’t even wring a
            chicken’s neck. But here we were, menu and dishes waiting for our
            decisions.

            I think he liked the idea of the soup served first (which he spooned with
            slow hand movement) and somebody watching, deciding when it’s right
            to approach and clear away bowls for the next course. Everything Ok?
            they kept asking, and he always looked up surprised.

            I told him about my post office work, how I started with house deliveries,
            moving up over the years to Postmaster (Act.) till they asked me to retire.

            He was curious about people I met.  Anticipation and gratitude, rain or
            shine, I said, even before I dug into my mail bag. They’d read their names
            on the envelopes, check the stamps, examine the handwriting. Someone
            had addressed them with dignity. In those days we were formal adults,
            thinking adults.

            In the post office I searched and searched for parcels that hadn’t arrived.
            They might show up tomorrow, or the day after, I’d say. Back then
             nobody accused my post office of theft or opening mail.

            I asked him if it was true people in the forest gave names to birds based
            on the sounds they made. Like the Qu’est ce que dit? And were there
            water spirits that grabbed hold of canoes and pulled them to the bottom
            of the river? He laughed. But that’s what they told us in school, I said. I
            never knew what his laughing meant.

            He let slip he was schooled by nuns at a Catholic school in the interior.
            He still paddles his canoe along the river late afternoons, passing little
            stellings, waving to people. As times changed he had to contend with
            power boats churning up and down the river.

            After lunch I arranged for us to do things. He wanted to see the big rivers.

            I’d hire a car and we took trips up the coast, or cross the Demerara. I
            paid the driver to stop and wait as long as we wanted, take us wherever
            we directed. We stood side by side, ignoring the baking heat, and looked
            out with new astonishment at our big rivers; intent on flow, not caring
            about our shaky bridge builders.

                                                            +

           So one day his son showed up at my house. Short, strapping fellow, with
           gold-rimmed sunglasses. Following the fashion. He hadn’t been to
           Georgetown since the incident in the market square.

           What you doing here? His father sent him to work on my roof. My roof?
           True, it needed work, but I didn’t know who to trust with the job. The
           “estimates” I got sounded like knives sharpening on stone.

           All he needed was the materials, he said. He had a friend, they could do
           the repairs. Where’s your father? How is he? Not doing too well. In fact,
           he didn’t have long to live.

           They say if out of the blue something happen to you, you start aging
           really fast. You add three to every one year. Medicine don’t help. Simon
           might have been dying all this time, but like he decide to say nothing.
           Not a grimace, not a wrinkle, not a twinge. And though I could never be
           sure what he was feeling, it seemed he didn’t want any sadness to
           spoil his afternoons in town.

           I used to be a thrifty person. Somehow thrift found its way from my
           parents’ bible to my habits. Well, that was then.

           I’ve arranged so that everything I own, the house, whatever is left in my
           Savings ('cause since meeting Simon I’ve been wondering if there's any
           point saving?) it will pass to my son. Wherever he is when he hears I’m
           approaching the pearly gates, he’s bound to hurry back here.

           Simon said there were places along the river he was told as a child not to
           go. Voices fell silent as they paddled past; people thought they heard faint
           cries, spirits calling.

           I told him about places in Georgetown I prefer not to go. As a postman my
           job was to deliver to homes with addresses. I looked out for dangerous
           dogs, idle watchers. I didn’t know enough about ‘spirits in the forest’ to
           disregard what he said.

           But I keep having this one dream, over and over, every Monday morning.
           I'm out delivering mail; find myself trapped in a yard; the residents
           refusing to let me leave, accusing me of opening mail; demanding I hand
           over packages they expecting, otherwise they won’t let me go.

           I don’t know much about Simon day to day, but if you ask me, he’s not the
           type to wake up one morning, tired of everyone and everything, and just
           float away. The Northwest is where he’ll live and die; come back and live
           there again.

           I could see him in his corial, paddling past one of the Don’t Go There
           places his parents warned him about; thinking, with not too long on this 
           earth, might as well find out what's really going on back there.

           When I stop getting message he’s coming to Georgetown, mark my word
           that’s where he is; that’s where he’s gone. In blue jeans with cutlass
           and crocus bag. Hailing and waving from the bush. That could be Simon.
          

           F.M. John
           Georgetown, Guyana

 

 

 

 

FLAPS . JUST SO WE’RE CLEAR

           

        Ask from the closet and dead man's clothes hanging
        on . how long! before the brand starts up, gods name
        new . promising this time no mask die cast, meters
        paid in spirit ‘n’ risen things.
                               Up late . we know near how the planet
        outposts run; last test, sun shields holding.

                                                        More . so we stir
        moon about done for howls . as capsules eagle away!
        fish feed on asteroids. Vantage points what’s beaming
        front lobe towers . glass sides list pyramid tips. 

                                                          Could be what's fixed
        wind twisting shapes. Still, no lip stiff sips wisping, You
        see, in those days/ or touched recounts . how much spread
        on the cob costs love.

        The life wed Art lock ? brush lines slipped off the grid
        no fear path found. Sensors pick up what once marveled
        so essential seeming, canvas left trails; and museum tap
        screens demonstrate how dust to code webbed tales.

        Rest best we can, filled feel . knowing it was worth
        the plastic parts played : skull scalpel phone in hand
        despite what frost ‘n’ fires put us through, hatch
        snatched from us . lucky at all we came ! brute
        incomplète . et tu.

                                                           – W.W.

                      

             

               

 

                     

           LESSING

       
                                    No thinker himself, Lessing
            Was horrified by the hollows of set fear
            In which those who could think even less than he
          Dangled like bats whose sonar echoed nothing outside
            All their caves the one cave, and nothing beyond
            All its labels they had swallowed and become,
            Tags numbingly hallowed like temple-standards.

            Lessing, to challenge his own cave’s habit-mind,
            Would in blind daylight stop in mid-flight some bat
            Whose wings and lips would then flutter and swear how
          Much like a lark it was darting through its cave-free day ‒
            At which point of the wayward fiction called life,
            Lessing would be swamped with envious regard
            For the bat’s rampant pluck, its gift from blindness.

              (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan)