many millions perished while our two species
achieved symbiosis by selection, between
this beach and that mountain 'under Capricorn',
in an agon of orifices, host and guest,
legs, wings, damp secretions. Now the dark swarms, my
lips mumble words over the busy bodies.
I write . The bones of the last boatpeople from
the north and the west lay somewhere under the dunes
where dogs dug and we played. When I was a kid
that's what we said . The safest thing's to touch nothing
on the beach, the back of the cave, the riverbed ,
never leave the nest in the bush, where you were born
and suckled. A mother's cry stings me in my
mind's ear stuck to the tape, another tongue trapped
in the dead of time,
Attention!
ies guepes!
Jennifer Rose
THE ITALIAN ROSE GARDEN
Today they are adjusting the Roman fountains
and stocking new goldfish in the basins.
The opulence suggests they could adjust
the roses' blooms. And Rome was even gaudier
than these sandblasted-white fountains intimate,
pale imitations of the resplendent rose,
tourniquets of the rose . A white Ceres
too short for a goddess clutches wheat to her breast
on a pedestal. She looks out over
the hacked-back bushes, peering through her cataracts .
Blind to the roses' fury, she does not suspect
their intentions yet: becoming armed civilians .
