Monday, February 14, 2011

They Will Take My Island

by Evie Christie


Over there was a father, a father's things, here
thick folds of fresh cut hair, piss, the cool ceramic.
This a girl's thigh, that patchwork quilt, a bare breast.

There you'll find a keyhole, the violence
of oak, a bare eyeball (your own eye!). A mother's hard-
wired palm.

Where can you exist? Sure, there's the matter
of birthright: they planted your brother's brain in that plot,
lost your father around here somewhere--you might track
his glass eye with your molars
in an electrical storm.

Is there space for you? Finger the map, lose
yourself here: this is an eye, mid-blink, the first
pulse of blood in your hand cocked dick, and this, your boyhood
room. Get lost
with them: the breasts and eyes (made
up), the perfumed thighs.

What did they find in the walls
of that artery, the locket's autopsy,
the shotgun's lovestruck path?

In this ballpark, a wisdom tooth,
a brassy band, a vow and this
was your island. They will take my island, too.



Saturday, February 12, 2011

They Will Take My Island

by Johanna Skibsrud


i. Chagos Archipelago





















ii. Map: Christmas Island




















iii. Floor plan: Imperial War Museum, London, UK.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

They Will Take My Island

by Nancy Jo Cullen


Of course there was blood, that was a given
We told each other everything and
She ate my teeth
It was a metaphor so we laughed & etc. until
The children returned

We had to put on our clothes
The children wanted supper, or maybe they wanted wireless plans
After we left the grassland the children didn’t care
For naked desire abstractly expressed or
Mother’s milk

Take the text but not the poetry, not the struggle
To say something true in the wild blue yonder:
That we are servants to the crush of the vernacular
That the children are leaving
That this land is your land, Yours
And we are post-peripatetic, post-menopausal

Take your bit of rock
We will lace our fingers and float down the river
Plump and savage outside the realm of the sacred
A fox will track the progress of crones
Kissing in the water