Flux

Kei Patrick

………………………What

……………………………………….am

…………………………….I

……………………………………………………. asking?

 

who are you

………………………………………………………………………..does it change

when you see yourself

………………………………………………………….when I give you a name

with a certain shape

………………………………………………………………from another angle

 

……………………………..You

……………………Are

……………………………………….in

………………………………………………………..flux?

Mes ves y sufres (See me and suffer)

Jorrit Donnerstag

I.

Yesterday,

With news that you were born,

Kings scrambled like fighter pilots,

The friction of their crowns

Sprinkling stardust at your feet.

 

Today

A night in the straw

And the lice and damp of a manger

See them stumble out –

Legs all tingly-wingly –

Into the wet grey dawn.

II.

Were it not prepared with

Our very own black-of-earth lentils,

I would not have eaten

The mud stew so quick.

 

But the taste

And the flavours –

The spice and the salt!

They brought to my eyes

Something you cannot deny.

 

III.

Patroclus and I

Were at first awkward newly-weds,

Like Shankar and Menhuin,

Cotched, shaking from the

Birthing-pangs of another music

On a pretend-cowpat floor.

 

In actual fact,

They ate Bedki Maj

And we were wed in Ravenna’s ruins

Under a sun that surely laughed

When empires fell.

 

IV.

Yesterday,

When I withdrew,

She made big bright lines on her wrist

And – so I wouldn’t clock –

Wrapped them with my dad’s old watch.

 

Today,

Us and the larks pick up the pieces in Uni Parks,

The stupid songbirds stunting as if

Nothing was in flux and

She wasn’t a painter.

 

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