Category: contributors

Second time round

Here’s
CLEAT once more, two days since its last entrance. Sound the
CONCH that such a word gets its second run. Will sounding the conch
BLESS this occasion? Perhaps not, but a bit of hooloo hoolay won’t go amiss
TODAY.

The Conch Shell, known as shankam in India, is widely used in the beginning of rituals as a mark of success .

A Taste of Eden

CLEAT lassoed, I tie up the skiff,
BLESS the water, bless the land, bless
TODAY. Here’s to the slowness, to the
CONCH on the beach, to the sun, to a taste of Eden unbarred.

End of play

I take out my secondhand FLUTE
to play the fifth piece from my father’s FOLIO.
His cantankerous, expository PROSE
LEACHes from the page, putting me off.     

The Birth of Prose

PROSE, epiphenomenal to writing and records of writing,
LEACHing some of words’ power: words need no longer sing in memory.
FLUTE’s melodic line, soaring, embellished, singular to the mind, vs.
FOLIO, numbered pages, going on, long form, the certainty of an archive replacing song.

The Gift

CLEATus doesn’t like his name, doesn’t like the spelling: both a
CHUNK of unquellable frustration. Yet, there is also his resplendent gift:
SNARE drum, kick drum, he’s a genius of percussion. When his hands are whirling, in
TURBO mode, he takes a kind of flight, borne up by sound, by forging time, by transport, by wonder.

Undoing the cleat

The
SNARE of my soul’s Enemy is a misshaped
CHUNK of metal pinned on one side to me, like a
CLEAT that joins me to him. Praise God for the
TURBO jet power of Jesus Christ to release me!

Scamping at the Dump

SCAMPing at the dump in a polka-dot
SHIRT and red plaid skirt,
(CLASHing in more ways than one)
Yet no one sane would
REBUT her claim to all she unearthed and won: such as a

SNARE for critters looking like new; a
CHUNK of styrofoam busted in two; a
TURBO pipe all rusted through; plus a dirty old
CLEATed soccer shoe (pee-yew!)