Bombay Gin

Here's some of the work you'll find in Bombay Gin 1998...

Diana Rickard
FROM APOLLINAIRE IN OCTOBER (MISTRANLSATIONS)

an old pair of yellow shoes waits below the window arranged when the light beauty pales like an inconsolable violet at the beginning of the minute though forests birth with arias not at all like little pills. you're a curtain, you ride across telephone wires beyond the traumatized giant with colored eyes of a Turkish town where indigent boys chew on white ties. here are the towered streets where trees crack over the very vagabonds they shade. in Vancouver the trail of white snow is the fire of winter: an orange on a windowsill.
 

Jack Greene
ALONG THE SHORE IN MICHIGAN
FOR LISA HAMMOND

"The intuitive is not discarded"- L.H.

Along the shore
            sea shells
    Along your bed
            kelp and vine
    Waves from a place
    only you could see

    I heard your voice in Florence
    Along the banks of the Arno
    In the 14th gallery of the Uffize
    You were there, as before,
    long hair, skin of alabaster, standing on a shell

    In Florida
    along the shore
    sea boys     sea girls
    girl shells boy
    boy shells girl
    sea shells she says
    sea shells

    Water, she says
    is not a word

    remember water
    is

    remember water

    remember

Anne Waldman
FROM "MARRIAGE A SENTENCE"

One said once an overt thing & the first time you heard it was not "parents" it was not "couple" even, it was not a curing or a problem. Even then or everyone seemed to live in one bed which took up a living room. Suppose the marriage bed. Suppose it bled. The infant bowed her head to ponder. A large head a child's intellect whose shoulder sprouted winds. Winds inside a mind. It was wonderful to be a wing in poetry, Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. What was a mind albeit true? Were their little rooms inside with beds in them in this one mind with eyes for windows? Messing though a wooden scent of pine drawer as in don't mess around in their drawers. Tables with human legs & scent of love & mix in food & children. Something in this one. Mysterious love instruments. And needles for the diabetic confused with drama, with Discretion at the bedside of valour. Or, you might say, winged hope. Panties, from Pan, god of . . . ? And it was a child's curiousity and breathin. That it could be strange. Warm bodies in the marriage bed. A jungle of sheets & flesh. Pillows & eyes & breathing. Marriage is a place surely surely. That it could be criterion, psalms of faith in it in it's hardhip & fruition. My hands exist because of marriage, my tiny fingers because of marriage. My toes curl up because of marriage. My hair is shiny because of marriage. I touch my cheeks to come to life because of marriage. To come to life knees, elbows. To come to life ankles. Tongue touches roof of mouth to come to life because of marriage. Something. What? Definite. Because of marriage. That it could be a temple & tempestuous & strange of body because of marriage.

Steven Taylor
THE CURATOR'S HUSBAND: A VOICE MAIL
AFTER E.P./ RIHAKU

While yet my mother combed my hair
I ran at the rough boys' icy slide.
The last thing I remember,
My mother's cousin's daughter's freckled gaze.
You went to Australia, they said,
Another in a multitude of exiles.

At thirty-five I met My Mistress you.
I never cracked, being paranoid.
Looking full on, I faced you without shame.
Written to occassionally, I wrote back.

At thirty-eight I desired to lie with you
In your grave a thousand years.
Why should I look further?

At thirty-nine we parted,
You went to California,
Magpies made a mocking noise in the alley.

You dragged your feet in that engagement,
Then he died on the freeway.
Lichens lit by autumn cloud,
Too many shades to weep for.
Leaves turned in the wind and we grew older.
Now our love is made a boy.
If you are coming down the canyon,
Please let me know beforehand,
And we will come out to meet you
As far as the mail box.

Cedar Sigo
A FACTORY TOWN HOUSE
FOR ROBIN AND TONY

Can just see
the dark object
for so long, falls

as a glint
at the screen door
wants out, goes

there, shrinks back then
the room is long Things (a laundry sink, man beside it.)
the things in their
right wavering

frames painted
darker in
small places the way

He will remember it
standing up
face crooked, back
of his hand
a wall is there, what is
his-To be sure of

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