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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