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Underground eXperts United
Presents...
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[ Mudfishes ] [ By Robert J Berry ]
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1. READING
(for Ahila)
eyelashes dip on the open book
She is reading
will not look up
The words are printing tall tales
on the intricate lace
of her feather hazel head
Lean long wrist bangles
reach down
Turn the page
my page
She rests
then her eyes walk
A scarlet moon is rising from
the printed ink
Her ankles bracelets shake softly
This is for you to read
2. EEL
Wind bowls up surf
Sand glass sharp
Shelter under these knuckled boles
Watch cloud savaged open ______
After the storm
delicate red feet
pick to the ocean's musselpools
Wade
Down
into the rubberbrown arms
of sea plants
Salt garments of the drowned
Clutch rocks
Eel
stonegrey, a ribbon of gut
Sees
3. WALLED GARDEN
Painted pots bake on the gravel
The latch of the gate is
Hot to touch
Come in
Sticky fruit is falling
On a jar of jam
A wasp walks the sweet rim
Black cat
lavishes in sun
Water gathers in one corner of the garden
Stands Smells frog-green
Brown veined leaves are burning
Snakes hunger about the greenhouse
and a cold angel
Thinks
On the neat box hedge
4. ASHES
(for my Mother)
Swing the mattock
Slice the baked clay
Flints, chalk
The blade works through
marrow of roots
fashions the six foot plot
Cotton seals my mother's nose mouth
... Her rings favourite dress
I do not know you
earth sun-brown
rills onto teak
over final flowers
I am standing farewell
Then Tonight
Your lips still
Your mask chalk
5. FINGERPRINTS
Evening bleeds red
Into the skin the pores of the sky
Night's head is bent towards the slow wash of the sea
Her feet moving over the gravel
The Channel bills the land
The tide turns a shingled hand over the
Blue chin and black stubble of the sand
The salt grass old thorny bushes
and sudden crimson flowers
of the dunes
Then damp open scrub
Houses built here
Dark peat and kindle backed up
Driftwood burning acrid spitting
In all our homes
The heavy animal sound of the ocean's rollers
smothers us.
If I press with my fingers in the dark
They shall leave no mark.
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uXu #458 Underground eXperts United 1998 uXu #458
http://www.uxu.org/
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