Convex & No birds
by Marc Vincenz
[ poetry - april 10 ]
Convex
Mosaic of flies' eyes.
Compound light
in pixels. Pinpoints.
Water is nervous
un-distilled, refracted
strip-stressed colours
bent into meniscus,
goose-bumping.
When sun is served
days from now
I shall see you again
in a clean light.
Numbered.
In your own image.
No birds
Early Shanghai mornings, window unzipped,
Hard tinny noises titter & trill & honk,
Shatter & ripple, yet, nowhere do sea birds skim:
No trash-pan kittiwakes, no lonesome terns fading
In mussel-caught pinpricks of sky dust,
Not a single sandpiper clowning carnival eights.
The wind smells burnt, sulphur-singed hot,
Charcoaled, as if he has been lying about everything,
Entirely unattended on the smoke-oil steel of wok.
Some Tarzan cleans the dizzy horizon with dirty rags,
Arcs pendulous on a single thread of corded hope.
Minutes later, memory wiped, window squeezed tight.
Inside, pigeons squirt bombs from the ceiling,
Grebes nest in my hair, a peacock struts the kitchen pecking crumbs
& the fattest phoenix of them all sits right here in the bath,
Preening, plashing away all that murky ash and dust.
Hear it? She's singing, as if in heaven.
