Ichors

rummaging through the night; I find her buried in a handsome coat. the darkness softens her trash-strewn make up to lay bags under her eyes. I have always thought to chase a beauty like that; blow my hunting-horn like kisses as I saddle up. I would wear her around my arm and discuss the big-game and the beasts at bay with boys that brandish scorecards into the hundreds. but, she hid from the canines lapping her neck with a head buried in all fours. I skinned her like a poacher bearing my ivory smile for her to unfurl flushed and screaming like a new born baby. caught in my hooves the wrong way.

The Jamaican's paper hands brandish the rum-bottle at me. The sun sparks hot chords down his spine as he hums to the heat. The Jamaican sits, the dry rum drawing its bow down his throat. Sitting in a different time-zone, different sweat, with different notes to hum. I pine for the capering strings of a quartet, but I am exiled with a marriage to a woman I will not recognise. The Mahoe trees throw drunken branches as the island drifts into a foreign night closing down the sky around me. Convulsions in their bark skeleton Buzz leaves down on the islanders like an English fanfare. Each person staggers; footsteps echo like c

the day grew old under the whines of the oak. a pitiful shadow cast where my great-uncle sleeps, collapsing into the last hours of fast. his scaffolding ribs creak and rusting lips purse like a vulture's greedy beak. tenement roofs trim the treetops, and canopies of chicken wire hinder the breeze. the machinery of tenacious heat welds my great-uncle to place and his sticky hands and feet curl and shrivel like dying weeds. stacks of cans replace stars, twinkling in the busy lights. my great-uncle, like a man to his maker: saw the neon lights drifting like a flare to a sobered sailor and took the bottle to jam the rasping

        wrought carols of holiday           sick children simmered            in the winter winds.      lawns became alabaster junk yards,         The evergreen carousel floodlit       tired snow, galvanised by late comers   ascending the lawns. kids like vultures: bore       heads protruding from a bulbous coat.     pickings of city snow, smashing windows.    a pitiful pine-tree crucified with lights: &#

. in the hard year the house was a bruise- blood clotting and pregnant beneath the wood. the rooms held darkness longer than light and smelled of life in reverse-      our young bodies bent, but tight as clothes-pins. the flowers in the yard were firecrackers and more than once I slept in a weed jungle, fingers stripped cables, wrapped in chicken wire boxing gloves. in the hard year, you hit like your father and I climbed stairs without making a sound.

. The city squawks with traffic at half past six. A Peking Duck hangs at the restaurant window. My friend explains how he used to raise them, hundreds of ducklings on their family farm. They lived for seven weeks and in the last three, I couldn't allow them to stop eating. And if they did? I force fed them. Did you feel bad? Not when I got paid. / His coworkers from the stock exchange are already seated. We sit down as waitresses ferry Yanjing beer and tea. The first dishes: chicken broth and lotus root, pork cutlets and peppers, beef tenderloin and watercress. As I clear my plate, they keep topping it; and as I sip from my glass, th

every day is garbage day somewhere, and the birds on my street line the pavement like soldiers as friday's tank creeps down the boulevard, crumbs of newspaper billowing from its war-torn mouth. the crows flutter sultry in the morning sun toward headlines trailing the street like roadkill, cramming bold-print helvetica into their beaks as the ink stains the asphalt.

. Take its mouth like a conch, portal to a violent sea, and let its tongue slip over yours. Hear it storm against your teeth, swallow. Do not care if it is French or not. We are sommeliers of a lower order. Anxiety sinks, thought fumbles for a raft. Stop. Remember you are bored. Worry not: you have half a case and yourself. You smile and touch your lip, drop your eyes to the bottle: empty as the man who left you here .

I. our city is a bed . a man tries to straighten the wrinkled sheet of road – gives up, sits down, pans the street for change . the apartment building thrusts, phallic, making love to an empty sky.  a burst of pigeons coo shut up shut up . a boy tries to fall asleep. his nightlight is a myth that burns out once a day . the girl walks off her roof . . our city is not a mattress .