THE CRITIC

I don’t believe in love.
And it’s because of me
and the childish reproaches
of Simon Bolivar coughing blood
in his hammock. Writers were already standing
in line for centuries
hoping to unravel the sleeping habits
of the sparse saint, this intriguing canonical figure,
for inclusion in their first bestseller.
I spent four years exhuming
the remains of all my ancestors,
searching for connections,
pitter-patter-pitter-patter
intuition of the mind's eye,
the sounds of the dead eating toast,
crows playing dominoes,
the polymaths of America worried
about their law degrees and what beds
it will take to become a politician
or a general who never receives fan-mail
because all his mistresses
joined the underground on their 18th birthdays.
I don’t believe in love.
My axle’s teeth have all been wasted.

But this is not about love, laws, or miracles.
It’s about the boarding house
and a can of corned beef,
warm rain and trying to resuscitate
suicides at a spiritualist session.
This is about riding a monocycle in traffic
and staging happenings
wearing clothes for Green Peace.
It’s not about global warming.
It’s about fighting to get certified
as a sign language instructor for plants,
and getting National Security to stop
monitoring steel bands.
We’re having a rally next Friday.
It’s about the breath
of fresh roses in our tombs.

Sergio Ortiz (saore)

ALONG THE CHIPPEWA

My world turns into silence
and this watching of it into shadow

this is the watery childhood of my dreams

If you have come to be a cloud
fading, i will wait

If you have come to be a stone
turning, i will wait

There is no parting, even in shore waves
There is no death, even in westerly winds

If i listen, i hear your voice
If i look, i see you singing

this is the watery childhood of my dreams
and walking along its banks,
i am so small.

Tim J. Brennan (68degrees)

WATER THE FISH

shattering like an egg over pebbles, the split
between your flashing colours and your hiding makes me
plunder my trove of tools; (jewels I have known before I quit
my yolk and left these rapid waters), and now, there grabbing my old net with all its holes, I see
unmended reasons why I failed before and will again. I knit
in furious hope this moment will not pass, and pause: my plea,
my heart, my lust all curl like weights into a hopeless cutting grit
and the net goes hard against this wind; I cast for you. alas. the water swirls to free
last traces of the glittering spume where for an instant your face in white and yellow sworls was writ
and now the memory too is gone
back into some distant and misunderstood, and fathomless sea

Brooke Watson aka Doctorshoot