News

Disaster comes
in palimpsest
fluttering newsprint
winging its options
to my window,
to be taken with breakfast,
fresh orange juice
and you.

You rip a
voucher – valid today
a 2 for 1
cheeseburger
so when you turn
the page a pouting
mouth kisses
a boat.

This is how we’re doomed,
or how we get by:

News

leaven our daily
reckonings and reconcile
bad news with something
sunny: the mishmash
splish splash of it
fuzzes like AM radio:
Sunday morning
cricket commentary
over mown grass.

Just, already
slap a smile on it:

I’m tired of things
falling apart.

The light touch is brought to you
by the next
auditioning hand model
from The Hand of God, Ltd.
Selected from
the agency’s seasonal
catalogue. This one’s
soft skinned
to do the dirtiest work.
Unveined she floats
disembodied,
applying colour.

What you can’t escape
grins, and these teeth
are the tip of the skeleton’s
iceberg, the earth’s grim
bonework breaking the
water's surface
into smile.