primus inter pares as pathology, Steve Parker

Judith Nelson, Map Tatter, 1997, 22X26


primus inter pares as pathology

 

all that big stuff she says how showy how
 now too big for poetry keep it undramatic no
 big words no climactics or adornings resist meaning
 interest and the urge to didacticism for it
 as though some pidgin yes how lookee
 we are pre-creole in our perhaps trinket-junkets
 shattered and bereft along like foam the beaches of Marseilles
 and Syracuse and new fabrics like lollipop martyrs
 in ruinated Leptis what history a lens to examine the fall of light
 between future reflection and here the passing
 breaking wave a waking flood-node origo a pulse or what a period what of we
 think how these junglee ferals of apertures
 close and how there will have been
 have been the age of smoking the age of cancers
 the age of a primus inter pares affect when
 the default script of even the most peaceful
          war
  handed down with the carnivorism the hero-complex
  that you are not striking
                       in appearance she will say later
  having left the other now little more than a bag
  carried off and this the children so cruel learning
  of her complaint made fun carrier bag his wrist
  a smoothless clunk and click of the unlubricated
  she all abdomen as all wilted balloon shrinking
  back to a little puff in which all of future immanence
  of origo-bang therein uncontained in joy at this aging so
  granted immoderacy and eccentre by her position
  in time will now frolic as never before
  settling in her own sand
  become like Billie
 all finally
 mouth

_____________________
Steve Parker

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