ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

 
THREE POEMS
by George Murray


The Flag

Quick: it's happening again,
the red lips of the cherry picker are once more
calling to report a theft.

Are we missing some shadow
when we exit through that darkened door?
Is an opportunity being taken

to shoulder past us?
Is there a chance to speak a moment,
a chance to pass on this wisdom?

Realistically, whether the wings
are made of wax, feather, or steel, when we fly
close enough to the sun…

If admission is free,
you should probably bring a friend.
It's too late for surrender now.

It makes more sense to use
the white flag we've saved as a tourniquet,
and when we peel it

from the empty arteries of the dead
its mottled stains will sign a next, lonely nation.
Sing to the new children:

O children leaping from our heads,
O birth without pain, O minds emptied quick
as tipped urns!

Might we touch one another and be
revealed? In the murky dark between rooms
the business of inheritance continues.

Hold your tongue, my hands seem to be full.



The Bed

So, what, only now are the tired finally waking?
A queue has formed at the Siege Perilous.
The sleepers are slipping deeper into that unlit self.

Sir Dagonet, only you can save us now!
Bearing a torch into darkness is noble indeed.
When Tiamat comes seeking Babylon, someone point.

Our minds are all meat in the same soup.
Buddha, I wasn't listening: did you say something just then?
Our inheritance has finally stood us up.

So much flying white it looks like flying black.
At least now we can say we know nothing's coming.
Only the murkiest salamanders will not sweat.

Eternity is taking for-fucking-ever to get here.
Only the fire-eaters in local carnivals will be spared.
Anger is the floral-patterned upholstery of emotion.

Solomon to Sheba, Just who do you think you are?
History is a bowl, dear Cherry, terse and sweet.
Unwrap the gold foil and find, what… another damn coin?

Have you tried lately to unforget something?
Hungry orphans are so easy to fool.
We could stay young forever simply by moving West.

Cleopatra sideways in a mirror, sucking in her gut.
Wisdom: when the sun sinks, it's time for bed.
Should a fly buzz close by, close the covers with a snap.



The Siege

In the dark outside the city, a lone man
stands and declares a siege,

his voice ringing out but being drowned
by the traffic only feet from his body.

He says the fur coat he wears
is made of the balding pates of accountants

and bureaucrats. He is angry
that we are always skipping the middles,

leaping from stone to stone over a brook
that would likely have only come

to our ankles anyway. Honey! he shouts,
the trees run with it, the flowers

are fountains of it! It is a different world
now, one in which bunches of grapes

can grow from our bellies,
where the valleys of our navels

should roll rich with orchards,
where our armpits could be jungles

ripe with unknown medicines! Bullets
should be bouncing off everything

in days such as these. The lock is divorced
from the door, the wing has left

the plane, the rooster has always
had a taste for chicken, every raindrop

is the miscarriage of a storm! Nothing
can be taken for granted, he cries,

until the moment we transcend ourselves!
I hold this to be self-evident!

His voice grows hoarse and fades in the night
and in the morning the last thing

anyone hears him asking is whether,
if every crack in the walk

is the boundary of a chessboard square,
what are the chances we are each

any given piece? Days later, when his voice
is gone and the lip readers are brought in,

they can unanimously agree on only one thing:
he's trying to tell us something.

Look! Out there! they think he's saying,
Our children are dancing

                      to the tapping canes of the blind!