Home       Bios    Links     Reviews     TS Publishing     Guidelines     Chaps

David Chorlton

Worry

The shadow life goes on

while we butter the toast,

read the newspaper,

and feed the cats.

It moves behind our backs,

speaks before it is spoken to,

and eats our breakfast

while we watch.

We pretend it isn't there

but it has no manners

and interrupts

each peaceful thought.

The news is the usual

bomb that flavours our coffee

with smoke, but we add

enough sugar to mask it.

Global threats are too big

to chew, but nothing keeps

the little ones away. They come

in shiny wrappers,

and we never see the face

of the one who gives them out.

Visiting Vienna, 1952

I

In a city divided

into zones of power

we tuck ourselves in

under Russian control.

On a summer night

the flags fly longer,

red as the lipstick

my favourite aunt bought

on the black market.

We are innocent now,

but still obliged

to show our papers

at the embassy

where light doesn't pass

through the windows

and the star

above the door

hangs in a firmament

of fear.

II

We have lost count

of our cousins and uncles.

Some of them visit,

bringing gifts

of chocolate and schnapps

so sharp

that when anyone begins to speak

in the past tense

it cauterizes their tongues.

III

We tour the palaces, winding

from room to over embellished room

in an obedient line,

while the guide

points out details of baroque

and the beds

where the emperor lay

at the height of his glory

with his white moustache

still growing as he slept.

IV

In a grandmother's room

nobody talks history.

We lean out to see

people walking four floors down

with a bandage

wound around their souls.

Time will make us better,

the old lady says,

if it ever starts moving again.

V

Along the station platform

handkerchiefs are pinched

between the forefingers and thumbs

of the ones we leave behind,

the empty wrappings

of all that went unsaid.

Emptiness

From one kind of void to another

we travel first

past the abandoned

grandstand west of Phoenix

where a dust devil twines

around fingers of light

crossed for luck

in the ghost race of winds through the creosote,

stopping at a desert

convenience store

splendid in its isolation,

a throwaway palace,

past trailer park driveways

of manicured gravel,

sandward to the dunes

lying naked,

and between a bombing range and a proving ground

beside ankle high vegetation

on the highway toward a sign

indicating emptiness

in which to park in the heat

with No Facilities

Handicapped Friendly

[Home]