‘Weather Gone Wild’, September 2012
1.
Orangutan languorous
on the incongruous jungle seat. Mongolian
boy pushes his sister
on a makeshift swing.
Frayed ropes, dirty, smiling
faces. Cloudless sky.
Raccoon crawls
from a ditch
tempted
by a choc-chip cookie.
Romeo Doneza’s city skyline is black and white
through a hole in a freestanding
rooftop door. Blerta Zabergja’s skyline:
smoke-stacked and orange-hazed. She takes
a photograph while she’s photographed.
In deep space, a single egg rests in a nest
woven by human hands.
A salt white sky
peppered by birds.
A salt white sky
storm-clouded with birds
in the shape of a girl
who might be dancing.
A snake charmer’s cobra
has choc-caramel markings.
The charmer
in saffron, receding.
2.
Aerial map of America physical.
Black and green. Warning:
fluorescent roboworm. Death
by slow grinding glow.
Diver in a test tank, a bubbled view
of a shining world above. Space probe
beneath the sea investigates
submerged mountains. A seal
in long, green grass. Man in the probe
wears glasses, his dashboard says
one nine five one seven seven one six two.
To his right,
another probe
like a drowning printer cartridge.
Many species of unnamed gastropods and shrimps
in thirty-one Brady Bunch squares. But no one
looks at anyone. A school
of orange swordtails
another printer cartridge beside a scuba diver
and a massive brain coral.
3.
A Filipino Tansier stares with gremlin eyes.
The sky
aqua, black and yellow.
Rising dust cloud. Pink and yellow lights
of Phoenix.
A burning fence pole at Bastrop.
Frozen spray on a four-wheel drive
near Lake Geneva at night. Smiling girl
skates. In Tennessee,
lovers in a flood sit on the roof
of a sinking car. Tornado scarred
Tuscaloosa from above. Survivors:
hospital and football stadium. Tornado now!
Black grey brown on a wet road
in Nebraska. An emergency vehicle chases it.
Gushing water chases a Chinese villager
down a stairwell. He’s in military fatigues.
Levee house at Vichsbury survives a flood. Miles
of brown water then Martian landscape. Bill
Tulloch sits under a tree, hat in his lap:
If you’re proud of your country, you try
to take care of it. San Saba
River is salt. Friday night’s football team stands
on its field under dusk moon. Kenneth Durst
in the Mason Feed Store watched over
by moose heads and leaning folders: They bought
a lot of hay and feed
to save at least their young cows.
One man perched on a windmill appears to fix it
while another, half-way up, stares at him.
