Poet:
If I'm here more or less on the equator
are these ants that crawl on this book of yours
therefore equatorial ants?
(They look like the same things
that come into the kitchen
at home.) Maybe they sting.
Let's say they sting: crawl up
from the sand across the book
past my hairy wrist onto my hand
& sting not such a serious sting--
just a kind of reckoning--a bill
to be paid for staying against common sense
to write this note about ants.
Would I be your victim then,
involved in something like
the searing kiss of equatorial
ants in the wide arena of melanin?
Word vulture, bone collector,
owner of cheap intellectual rings:
keep talking like this: you alone
will drain the world of meaning.
Gerald Fleming
Contents | Mudlark No.
3
| 7 | 9 |