Issue 7 | Summer 2010

Two Poems

Offshore

I wanted a ring with a carved Indian

face, or a horse hair instrument

that droned, but the Gulf was beaten

with oil in its gills and feathers,

a desperate mix, viscous and black.

Give me the horse skull,

keep the credit card.

Give me a great blue adventure,

I’ll just stand and stare.

The pelican grounded,

the sand like cement,

the open wound of our planet

cauterized just enough,

the shallow drill heading for bone.

 

Nuclear

The dark, steel drums of waste

sinking beneath the mountain.

The hot circuitry moaning

through the grid, alive, but forced

to move.

These things wash over me.

A crowd draws in, closer

to the vast desert, collapse

like sinkholes, into fathoms

of what I want,

what you want, what we think

we need.

Tell me of the arctic hare, the caribou,

the sinking ice levelling

habitat and home.

Silver and gold cities that blanket

the country, now return to dust.

 

Filed under: Poetry