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