Poetry

One still morning in a high, hushed village
on that green island of cypress and pine,
sun-beat oak and rock, from a rooftop whose
loose tiles dislodge from my careless steps

I’ve fluttered around the edge of cliques,
pressed my beak against the bars,
not in envy, but out of interest,
and for the little warm
glow they give off. 

My broker and I watched the markets drop, 
ticker crawling across the bottom of the Bloomberg screen, 
and salvaged what we could,
kept Microsoft, sold AXA, unwound

He found me browsing the poetry section of a bookstore.
I remembered his face from my last readings.

He found me browsing the poetry section of a bookstore.
I refused his leaflet. His voice became agitated and loud.

This morning your mouth
Was all I could think about

The martyr is borne
through town on the backs

of believers.
Such a ghost ship!

Storm me.
Send 

me down into the dirt
& dark, raise 

me like thunder up.

Suppose we surprised him coming off the path
into the patch of pines and saw palmettos,
two girls with our child-sized bikes. Suppose
he had a reason to chase us back to the path,
his pale face flushed with—what? Desire? Wrath? 

Turner, a celebrity chef, wrote Brian Turner’s
Favourite British Recipes: Classic Dishes
from Yorkshire Pudding to Spotted Dick. He played 
drums for the horror-punk band Schoolyard Heroes,
played hockey for New Zealand in the sixties, lifted
th...