Back to Issue 4

The search for wings. by Vincent Berquez

I suckled her music into me,
A duet with my mother's
Swollen breast and hot milk.
She pumped,
Flooding my core
As I gasped existence
Into the greater fabric of life.

The gripped desire to be fed
Overwhelmed and I greedily
Mouthed her teat
For a bellyful of humanity,
I swallowed my future deeply. 

My mother sang
Imperious songs
Of damned eternity
As she forced herself into me.

I have no memory of her pushing,
When I left the immensity of her womb
And the light pinched my dormant senses.

The gods of breathing nature attacked
As the bacterium of time began to tick,
My fiery wings fell from possibility
As I landed in the waking soup of my life.

Memory Box.  by Vincent Berquez

I place you in the fertile soil
of my memory, a stitched quilt
of numbers patterned
with the thread of time
with the days flickering fast
and slow, 
the novelty of months
the surprise of years
paraded before us,
and we often forget don't we
what meant what when it did
and we roll up and down hills
startled by the changes in us.

I carefully cradled you
in the warmth of these palms
immersing you deep in my mind
in the wealth of our shared time
in my memory box, I keep you
out of the noise of the world
in the we, in the silence radiated.

And this is not a box
for forgiveness and loss,
not from the death of parents
by orphaned children bewildered
in the grit-earth of an Africa country.

My memory box is not physical,
not old pressed metal discarded long ago.
In my life I have such wealth and possessions
that I never need to give or sacrifice
the little I have on the path
of future suns and moons
in symbols and objects and magic.

My memories have no consequences
Of pain and poverty of HIV and AIDS
I will not be buried in it in the dry clay
In the infectious glare of the day,
In the swell of tears
after the departed have gone.

My box is an allusion
In the luxury of safety
and support,
here in the thirsty world
of the first world,
in this room abundant,
satiated.

My memory box is rich
in design and affection
and I do not devalue you
by saying so
or use this device used by others
to mourn and remember their beloved,
but this is a private sanctity of love
that we inhabit in this space just for us.