Featured Poet - John Tunaley

RED VELVET CAKE

Six flags flutter over hammocks and tents,

Bright silken maidens in their grass-green gowns…

Celestial girl-scouts…benevolent,

Chat gracefully of art, love and hometowns…

They await ambrosial alligators

Floating downstream to join their social

Circle … not as grave-tidings transporters,

But harbingers of days more hopeful.

Then, they’ll snap their fingers for red velvet

Cake and coffee. Mouths full of marbles, (yet

Wired to talk of crops, tulips, Bridge…). Mindsets

That reveal shoals, shallow wells barely wet,

In these drying ponds, a thought stirs in the mud

‘Thrift’s not the answer if their money’s no good’



BIG BEND

At the big bend with beautiful views of

tiny temples, the sun’s setting near where

the ammo plant shoots over the State Line.

John, the fat-headed Baptist, shuffles and

whistles in Hungarian while jigging

between the prongs of his pink tuning fork.

As long-haired Professor, he gives his wife,

Joyce, a dutiful peck. Afterwards, not

caring one iota, she turns her dry

ducks’ back on memory’s waterproofed banks.

High on her island of slaughtered pride, she’s

manifestly not plain-dealing Eros.

Down by the levee-break, where mires fluke and shiver …

… a vixen belches sulphur into the river.



UNDER THE VOLCANO

DEET immune mosquitoes buzzing with lean

Intent, inhale the breath of my loved one.

In my great cold circle, I’m crushed between

The extreme eastern and western-most points.

I rejected Darwin’s ice-worm theory

When I summoned the tattooed sisterhood.

Seven set on him. Devil-red and eerie,

They pulled his ears and chucked him in driftwood.

I lit candles to keep crows mute all night ...

… (crows sad as waterfalls). I still expect

Loons at depth to restore the blind to sight …

… For their dark jet eyes to move and reflect.

Under the volcano, I’ll hide with the graylings,

Away from the black oil and the earthquakes’

scaling.

COALFIELD

At this spot, the coalfield’s stony … barren.

Pointedly goaded by bean-hill robins,

Horn-beaked parrots jockey for position

With pigeon-toed, pigeon-chested … pigeons.

I reflect on the prospect of keeling

Over, curving down to ridged gravestones

And daisy-sods. My frozen head’s feeling

For gilt-edged misers in their cash-point zones.

In the mist; cross-crumping, pat-patting guns

Blind me to love. I’m deafened by war planes

That buckle and mill my hollow skull bones,

Snap my hanging limbs with howled hurricanes.

When tow-men come by, it’s me they’ll discover,

Haul me away…and I hope I’ll recover.

THE WATERS PASS

Sun-flowered, stone summited weirs step up

the valley. Ox bows are bent on rolling

back the reddish, blue-green eight leaved cups

which like inlaid molluscs are petalling

the forest. Eddying whirlpools linger,

chasing engraved starred points in a channel

that loops, dithers, ribbons … reforms. Stringers

of plaited pearls wade then plunge so they can

hear … silver fish grunt in their black-billed drain …

… harps as they call, carve, feel, snake and shiver

into prismatic crystals … horns that grain

and saucer their sounds over the river …

… to where the vestry cat at midnight mass

chokes on its fur ball as the waters pass …

MIDNIGHT

Midnight laboured to spew forth earth, sky, sea …

Islands martial with tattooed epaulettes,

Devastating music, rain, fertility

Carving volcanoes into ziggurats

From high frigid, to low torrid zones …

Rainbows drift away over the starred lagoons,

A catamaran’s crab clawed rigging groans

As its masked rowers spin sharp dolphin turns.

Humpbacked whales and measled fish start sinking …

Once more the geese neigh to warn of war,

Drowning brass bands hear the floor planks creaking

(Sandalwood’s steeped spiritual power).

While robed bishops sift the punchbowl for half-burnt bones …

Quiet feathered warriors pile funeral stones.