Art & Poetry by kerry rawlinson

They bleed in sticky sap

 

from initials and shapes

engraved spontaneously with stick,

key or pocket-knife into naked

 

phthalo green flesh-

places; names; declarations and dates

pungently dug.

 

Inscribing papyrus is visceral:

Moses was here, along with Kilroy and any

simpleton or saint ever since

 

gouging devotion into woody tissue

or pulp; etching ivory, bone and bark;

tablet and diary and i-phone to insist

 

I’m not anonymous or ephemeral!

I exist!

Here’s my mark!

 

But as the yucca’s active manifestos

desiccate, livid sets of

letters and messy connections

 

are rejected to accept

another, surgically inserted

above another;

 

some prior Chosen One

dries up beneath the next lovers;

a newer date replaces someone’s

 

previous fate,

‘til we ourselves become

the medium,

 

a lexicon of memory satisfyingly

scratched into the living layers

of our inner skin,

 

atrophying.

---

young boy

a young boy squats atop rust-cracked dirt

waiting for the wire-strung bus,

pressed shirt spotless, blue backpack slung

 

with one glad-wrapped, white-bread sandwich,

two chewed pencils, a paper-curl of ground-nuts

and his first careful notepad.

 

His nyina nipples a wide-eyed babe

wrapped in neon chitenge.

White lady crosses the third-world

 

street on western feet. They both greet:

smiles that speak in the mother-tongue, cognitive

global lingo for “lovely”.

 

Young boy, deciding on his man-skin,

clad in worn-soled shoes, spit-shined,

grins for my Nikon; then leaps high

 

for the lame church van, enthused for

eager first-world teachings in the meagre school hut,

thatched rough as an old man’s hat;

 

and I

don’t know…

 

how far have we really come?

 

how far has he

to go?

• ● ●

nyina –             his mother

chitenge –         length of fabric that Zambian women wear, also used

to transport items, including babies 

---

Decades ago, kerry rawlinson gravitated from sunny Zambian skies to solid Canadian soil. Now returned her muses an unmitigated optimist, she’s the winner of Postcards, Poems & Prose’s “drawkcaB” Contest; was a finalist in Ascent Aspirations; Mississippi Valley; Malahat Review Open Season and Hawai’i Review Contests; and long-listed for 2015 National Poetry Contest of the UK. Poems, some with artwork, accepted by: Midwest Quarterly; ditchpoetry; 3Elements Review; Main Street Rag; Unshod Quills; War, Literature & the Arts; Codex. amongst others. Photo-artwork publications: Qwerty; WaxPoetry & Art; Adirondack Review;AColorProject, Five on the Fifth; The Peachland View front page, Nov. 14, 2014; Peachland Art Gallery Exhibition.