Diaspora Dialogues

Supporting new fiction, poetry, and drama

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November 2012

Tokens

by 

I used to think
that a
glassy, effervescent stone,
dug up from the dirt
and spit-shined for song,
could message the moon
and undress its powers to control
the sea
from my pockets; that a
long, cylindrical whistle,
carved from soft wood
and painted in earth tones,
could call the birds from the south
and conduct their music;
that a
broken watch
left behind by my grandfather,
could turn the tides of
fortune into my waiting palms.

But the undulations of the ocean
remain strange and ethereal
without retiring
to the swoops
of my hand,

for tilling the land where
the cattle graze
takes more than a rock,
a whistle,
a watch,
and an Ohm.

Blind Man View

by 

What is it that a blind man sees?

Without his sight, does it make him free?

After all how can he get hurt if he can’t witness pain,

How can he love if he can’t see what love contains?

Fingers upon curvatures, a choice to see what’s bad

Not knowing the difference between what he has and what he had

Because if he can’t see what’s come and what’s left him behind

Then he doesn’t know a piece is missing, not wishing to rewind

But if he can’t see the bad, how will he be secure?

Read a face with fingertips but someone’s heart he can’t be sure?

So what exactly does a blind man see?

Blots of colour, or a smudge spree?

Does he see any outlines, or nothing at all?

Discoloured pupils, running into walls.

But when blinded, all other senses increase so much more

So I guess he sees much better than he ever did before

Memory

by 

Trees hunch over sky; skin 
and hard-bone cliffs.

Come winter: beards of ice,
grunting stone. That day

I walked into surf, wore a shawl
of sea spray.

Still in her armchair, my grandmother wades
past headlands

to open ocean where waves 
wrestle and refract.

And then farther: there, the sky 
is unbroken and the wind

never blows. Her returning rain
sews green to grass.

Trading Countries

by 

It began with fog 
and headless homes.
We lose sight of star-markers;
streetlights burn out.
This is a world of crawlspaces,
children digging through mulch
or gravel. The steppe-streaming sun

uncoils, scalelight rasping stone.
We root into baked sand for bones,
pitch the worst of ourselves
into river.
         I think that if I touch her 
she'd unfold into cherry blossoms, skin 
slipping off, hoofbeats
in lieu of a pulse. I feel my own

composition: apples 
in my throat,
dry-brush ligaments.

Horizon peeks from valley's end, 
blue-eyed. I have seen these hills
on the other half of earth,

centuries soaked in the land's spine.

Opening

by 

This bar grew from stone and wood,
russet and cream.
Trees lean on the porch, nonchalant.
I'll take what he's having.
Hear: phrases sung from in-between. 
Strange babies, 
microphones desirous of lips.

Buddy's car was having trouble, 
brakes like grinding teeth.
Overhearing, someone fixed it 
without saying a thing.

One table collects candles from the others;
they divine in flames reams of words,
faces Midas-oiled.
Without power, the set moves acoustic. 
Two inscribe a circle: their voices are caves,
cloisters of scarce-seen motes. Light falls far from here.
Guitars've outgrown us. Drums move inward.

I touch you, in the way it was before language,
and my lungs brachiate into song.

Heartbreaks, Earthquakes

by

I have left my heart in so many places, and now I set it free to be cascaded through the violent waves, and utter bleakness of a barren sea it will float and wander to a far-away place where it may live or die it could be broken and shattered or perchance kept safe it will nestle comfortably in the great heaves of a sigh somewhere in a crowded city my heart will wander back fully restored and void of all pity making up for all the enchantment I’ve lacked until then, I shall let my heart grow spread its branches to places unknown bleed its colours and resonate an everlasting stain where it remains will prove to be home its infinite hue will stain sidewalks and sunsets promising an eternal shine the deep blues and greens, the fiery reds perhaps destined to be a failure by design

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