Lights of home


Woke up stockinged blindfolded disarranged over Ashgabat –

2 ½ romances surely about lands us at the crawling border –

Dulled unfaithful apples threatening the plague as you pay –

There were spectacular grounds for mistaking it for home –

Bold signs that read like mama and café like taxi and home –

Like all the pictures and promises the exotic couldn’t keep –

The camirror in the cam-era fronting the same procession –

Except the pressures of capitalism were even greater here

Like the famed sun much in one’s face and seemed to be

Cursing then even stalking if soon ever after loving us –

For who in the single diminishing instant we had become –

Then the northern spring in bubble jackets our worlds –

Comparable commensurable separable teased apart in

Levels of address some time later in the fricative trill in

Frescoes of the eucharist or prayer lost language in the

Grammatical foundations and if we’re nurtured in a tri

Angulated hearing on marbleveined stairs we bring that

Piece of home with us that was waiting and cling to it

 

 

OL230-cover-(small)

Read the rest of Overland 230

If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue

Or subscribe and receive
four outstanding issues for a year

Chris Brown

lives in Newcastle where he works as a teacher. bulky news press published his chapbook, slender Volume, in 2017.

More by Chris Brown ›

Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places.

If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate.


Related articles & Essays