The Trader’s Bell
Maharaj and Co. General Suppliers, Established 1888. Large strips of scruffy Canadian pine cover the floor of the old warehouse. Sailors haul cargo from clippers, docked and resting after the tea run east. Accountants with clipboards (breaches pulled high, quills marking loosely) take stock, while dockhands scurry around in dusty rags, sweating. Can you almost
The Hi-Hat Solo
Foot pedal and cymbals, the beat, and the hi-hat solo. The audience watch her deliver from the shadows. “Hello Mr Jackson, your table is ready.” Last minute folly, the table reserved from the back of a deadbeat bus, a late-night jazz-hall at the end of a downtown boulevard. The sound terrific, the saxophone, the beating
Christmas Carols
Trombone, Trumpet, Tenor Sax, and Flute. Tightly compressed sound moving through mist to ears all around. Some near, some far, and some by the Ferris wheel. Others sit in the beer garden, nibbling on mince pies and washing down gritty bits with pints of Old Growler. A steaming urn on a dustbin table, and the
Persephone
Otherworld child emerging restored to set a gentle lingering squeeze on leg or arm. And so it begins: The way you clear food from your teeth with your tongue The swagger in your hipsway The palm pressed to my chest Delicious smile betraying a distant diastema and the mascara clotted on your lashes The softness
From Zerbst
Across the Russian wastes, towards Leningrad and Moscow. Across the flats, the galloping horses thunder on, the supreme Empress, pressing with God-Speed from Riga, before the snow and fur and shiver, her dominion strengthened by a new country. slow famine, disease, but the land strong and rugged, people weak, dying.
The Evening Dress
Untouched, a beautiful size 12 pressed up hard against teeth in a cold vice gripping. Naked in isolation, she waits for a strand of cotton and a dub from a Jack Rabbit pelt, thumb and forefinger, wax on felt. Slow concentric movement across taut yarn, fraying on rough skin, the evening dress of Marabou and
Little Bird
I watched you die, little bird, how you squirmed, the crazy cat plucking you gracefully from your aborted flight, crimson spurting, eyes rolling loosely as you slipped into limpness, fluid discharging from every orifice, your young opponent, licking chops and feathers wet, bloody whiskers white. For Kari Jeppesen