how now, black Dow

the eight-to-five savagery that’s our scramble
                to survive—drive drive drive striving to grasp
some non-celestial amoral nirvana bartering &
                brokering daylight for fiscal bliss brainless diss-
ection double time double chins double talk heady
                deadly trivia drivel americana dreaming riviera
st. tropez but de trop de trop overloaded briefcase-pro
                blasted to bits in another stockticker hit
young gun unslung & gone at fifty fat fractured
                frazzled unraveled unloved undone
burned out blitzed all of it superfluous to life
                to love to the forces of a simpler
existence without the banker blunderings that frac
                the abyss calls options asset-backed
shorts puts oil gold sugar tech options logging coal

the Dow Jones
                black hole
 

keep moving

The Specimen

How Do You Own Disorder, Disorder?

heretical reflections

you only know          your face
            in reverse; can’t see the leviathan
rising             behind it. what we ask
            of the glass is nothing
less than             perfection,
         or we reject its evidence.

I thought I knew          the way.
            checked the birdtracks in the sand—
they led           in all directions.
            how can we know our true blood
if we haven’t yet             felt it
                   properly bleed?

like inarticulate          Counts,
            we sip from jugular goblets in sharp-
toothed             isolation, backs turned
            to crosses, eternally alive,
concealing             our hides from sun;
                  shunning mirrors.

I hear the GPS ping              that guides
            the mosquito bitch to her target,
guilelessly aiming             for naked
          evening veins & procreation
(her compulsion          for haemoglobin
          bequeathing us the itch).

and I see the bud’s               not afraid
            to burst forth & flower, effulgent
for only some              few golden
            hours or days, then expiring,
not requiring              czech cut-crystal bowls
                for its own validation.

loathing & admiration.             what’s beyond
            the lead-silvered glass? is there no depth,
no third vantage?              surrogate beasts
            feast their eyes on me. disrupted
by the act of gazing—              rife with masks
                    & trite critiques of surface
aspects—           trust comes unstuck.

          we doubt—& loathe the act of doubting.
can I open           the cabinet of reflections
          just a crack…? does it reveal my true
face? tell me,           am I smiling? or am I
                  screaming back?
 

Author Note: The hybrid work is from a W.I.P. entitled: ‘Little Fish, Uncanned’ which is a hybrid art-poetry manuscript created from ‘Cannery Row,‘ by John Steinbeck. Each poem is an erasure of one single page of this brilliant novel, and each poem is placed on a background of my original art, whether digital photo-art or some other art medium.

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kerry rawlinson is a mental nomad & bloody-minded optimist who gravitated from sunny Zambian skies to solid Canadian soil. Winner of Princemere Poetry Prize 2024, honorably mentioned in Proverse Press and Fish Poetry prizes and placed in others, e.g. Bridport, Canterbury Poetry; Room; National Poetry Society and Palette. Recent work: League of Canadian Poets; Pinhole Poetry; Touchstone Lit; Novus Lit; UCity Review; Drunk Monkeys; Passager; Wild Roof Journal; Suburban Review; Topic Take Up; Grain; Freefall; Rochford St. Review; Prism Review; Event Poetry; Prairie Fire, and more. kerry is still wandering barefoot through dislocation and belonging—and still drinks too much (tea). kerryrawlinson.com  X: @kerryrawli