Legislation
p. 71 · Read in the full issue
Random thoughts
A spell of feathers to charm Cinderella: my son wants wings for Xmas. ★ Slow suck of thought sprouting green voices out of our tongues ★ the day dying— white moths trapped in glass lantern flame ★ sleep brother in the banyan shade lazarus will rise again ★ in a church by a river a man prays into silence the river spills into the sea ★ in my palms no nail marks just mountains and valleys the eroded geography of fate ★ my father dances in his loneliness to tunes of coins tinkling in his mind ★ above my mother's grave ancient pua trees gossip the wind is sick of their chatter.
Once upon a time, a government in my country passed legislation banning rain. It didn't rain for their three-year term of office, and, in the drought of a general election, they lost in a landslide.
The new government passed legislation banning landslides. (The Prime Minister was a scientist who believed in miracles.)
From lack of oxygen
One day, a stranger visited our house.
We ate the light away.
Before he left, he told us he was God.
I believed him but my children didn't—God, they said, had a long white beard and lived in heaven where men, like that stranger, would die from lack of oxygen.
in memory of
jim baxter
in the moon’s shadow horned rhinoceros beetle burrows into sweet succulent heart of the palm, measuring our dreams for that dawn when the longtailed tropic bird will hug the immaculate calm in the whirlwind’s eye, and we won’t be afraid of our burdens of great pain, great cold, great darkness and have it no other way, Jim.
Weather forecast
a convergent zone lies over the soul in the absence of faith fantasies of innocence crumble petal by petal the parasitic worm of terror will continue to feed on the heart’s sinews no change in the weather until the 21st century and the birth of aquarius (we must however remind our listeners that meterology is not an infallible science)
ALBERT WENDT should, by now, be a familiar figure to MANA readers, having contributed to pre vious issues and been interviewed by Marjorie Crocombe (June and July).
On this page is a selection of his poetry.