On tiles, All perfectly abandoned, About your parrot & A driving student restarts the car
by Arlene Ang
[ poetry - december 06 ]
On tiles
fixed as wishbones in sand,
there are no answers for sky.
The tulip sunsets
a tapered albatross wing
across the floor: here crumbs
are apostrophic when it comes
to cutting fortunes into palm.
Silences ellipse a path
from K to Da, the spaces in between
like hiccups, the smoke breath
of dying flame. In the half-light,
ecru knows lampblack.
Branches gut the window:
this is autumn, a swing in the breeze
expires, anonymous letter writer.
The conch in the glass cabinet
remembers the sea, and the sea,
perhaps, remembers thirst,
the shipwreck, the ambient lighting
inside the green bottle.
All perfectly abandoned
The taste of privateer in two teaspoons of nutmeg,
rust stains, those imaginary years in Dunkirk.
That first job as a dream guide (right-side-up format).
I woke up with flea bites on my earlobes;
this is the afternoon, not connected to ossuaries.
On the top shelf: How to Counterfeit Sanity.
Overweight hook hands in the fruit box -
at this stage, the waltz becomes Gethsemane.
Even the Czech violinist had a thermos, three wives
and several ketchup accidents in his life.
Penniless, I tried to catch jellyfish with bottled messages.
Rough instructions on floating this wooden leg
in the middle of a seastorm called Thursday 2:34 p.m.
On the deck, fish fights in unfashionable knitwear.
Strange. I never kept track of Jean Bart from school.
And he sandboxed all his letters to the girl next door.
About your parrot
I have it. When was the last time
you took that mosquito out of your eye?
Personally, I sleep better
when I'm not running over shrubs.
No, you can't have it back.
I keep it under my coat like a hard-on.
I also have your doll house.
The one you said burned down
in whale oil back in 1969.
I remember you turned green that year.
It's hard to be angry with the dead.
For example, a T-bone steak.
Or someone else's lover all because
canned beans remind you
constantly of sex. A neighbour
complained yesterday about oysters
rotting up and down the elevator.
Your parrot, it's less volatile.
Since that accident with the swivel chair
it has stopped arguing with me
in Technicolor. The way
it handles the phone with one foot
and uses the other to dial
is more than ornamental. You can't
call it Religion forever. It's using
an assumed name now. Again
and again, like premeditated murder,
it calls the wrong number.
A driving student restarts the car
It's raining.
Like a shipwreck of sorts.
She turns the key.
Horns blare. She's thinking even the missionaries
in their catechesis went deaf.
She wipes the windshield
with a sleeve. She takes her time
because time means she can question
the meaning of nine virgins.
She sneezes. She turns the key again.
She doesn't hear the choking
sound. She remembers Friday the 13th,
like a multiplication table.
And a date who came
with too much ketchup. She turns the key
for the third time because
oftentimes she's still unsure
of being loved, of being on the right
intersection at the right time
to the right of the center line. The instructor shouts.
He's got something in his eye. This time
the engine chatters
wildly. She's thinking curdled milk,
arsenic toads, her eyebrow
on the rear-view mirror like a crack.
