Bramah and the Beggar Boy
Page 3
Long yards of Indigenous dialects.
These were unearned, sacred, and Forbidden.
Pottery-painting-prints-jewelry-tattoos.
Weavers, smiths, warriors. Edges and borders.
Thresholds, after-parties, covert ops, slant.
Vast armies on a darkling plain. Empire.
Land masses: geology and shape-shifting.
Glaciers. Earthquakes. Tsunamis and currents.
The town of towns. The Rann of Kutch. Raindrops.
The Lance of Kanana. Mother Lakshmi.
Aunty Maria. Aunty Magda, too.
All the women of the Wishing Well. Winds:
North, South, East, West, circles, squares eroding—
Tundra, shield, meadows. Green hills far away.
Bogs and peat. Granite. Oceans, rivers, tides.
The Moon, her many mistresses, singing:
layers, fragments, communion and makeup
adornment, dresses, high heels and barefoot.
Scheherazade, one thousand tales within——
Perimeter, that Detention Centre:
just Outside, where roving Beggar Boys sang,
Come ye in, airborne, after, masks and hoods,
masks and hoods.
Time.
The Map They Steal
For You Who May Return, if without soap
barter with Aunty Agatha at the farm.
If in Pacifica, retrace your steps:
Take the Albion Ferry , then by foot
before the airlines shut down all the flights.
The Things They Take
Bramah:—those go down first, yeah, before you fum-i-gate
that Beggar Boy smiles, nods his head, pulls his mask tight
gloved fingers rip cotton rags, turpentine
all their finds, dipped, wiped, stored, to be bartered.
Bramah, smiling, her brown hands to the boy’s:
a packet of letters, tied up with faded red string:
I did miss you, then.
I am resolved to write,
no matter what happens.
Inscription tools and surface material:
I think about these a lot.
Discarded letters found in an oak box
Your hand crushing mine, our lips never kissed.
Grandmother’s Instruction
Later, past midnight, around the campfire
Bramah’s grandmother calls everyone in,
closer to the flames. The Beggar Boy sits,
his hands pull on that packet of letters
his fingers do the reading——
shapes rubbed, upward strokes: dots, crossed ts leaning
not even his lips move, not ever, him silent as the night.
Discarded letters found in an oak box
Your hand crushing mine, our lips never kissed.
Everyone laughs then, watching the boy’s fingers,
and Grandmother says,
Bramah, next time be sure to search the farmhouse.
Video Surveillance: Investigator’s Logbook
By Order of Consortium: camera numbers defaced.
Locator: Pacifica Region, Outside Perimeter
In the year of the reign 2XXX
Video Surveillance Monitor Status: On
Partial Recording, Retrieved: Farmhouse.
Squadron leader, Guards of the Fifth Gate (name):
Funny how many of you posted in here.
We was told the lock needed opening fast.
Did you stay with her the whole time, then, eh—
All them cameras we tested worked just fine.
So I guess she just did some spell on them?
Bramah and the Beggar Boy Find an Old Oak Box
Her long black braid, her locksmith tools, clipped.
His gap-toothed smile, his no-name runners ripped.
What is it? he asked—they lifted the lid—
inside parchment, codes printed on paper
fragments—
a handful of dusty disks
a book, letters and many other things:
rubbed, held, stolen, ransomed—tied up with string,
brought back, bartered from the Before-Time—when—
Outside Perimeter, the boys chanted:
Right as rain, good as new,
Jumped the fence, you should too—
Jumped the fence, you should too—
The Letter They Find
Dear Future Survivors:
Our only defence against gas, frayed scarves
no mistaking the colour of our skin—
We would search October and April, then—
We would find no traces of doors or gates
or doors only where locks turned, then jammed, eyes
scanned, for re-entry, or bribes, or bodies—
We are sending you this message, in case—
Although you are three light years away:
We found these fragments, an old oak box,
it’s a strange one, no matter how often emptied
something always at the bottom
no matter how ill-treated, no scuff marks mar
this plain smooth lid: opened to this letter
see the writing, almost disappeared:
Your hand crushing mine, our lips never kissed.
Partial Transcript: The Rehabilitated Scientists
We’ve not seen again the likes of them here.
We renounce facts and now wander with myth.
We swiped, before the blast, you better, too
those signs pockmarked into walls;
we renounce replication or numbers.
We only try our best to help the sick.
Photographs of Prisoners
We walked knees bloody
masks torn; coats thrown
down to the bare stone ground—
no chance of ever going back,
none at all: .
our scribes wrote: .
, be it resolved .
We did not ask for mercy
that Grand Hall, we heard them:
. Their sayings,
night after night, and—above:
Cold-Heart-Wolf Moon,
laughing .
calling us, our damned visions,
close, closer: .
See you inside, this we sang out as—
Court Records of the Lost
Our skulls cracked on that granite
blood flowing—if at night, a traveller:
we knew him as the Lord of the Taverns,
girls flocked to him; women fell—
In his hands a book of magic, black bound:
El-Khemi, and geologic Time—
all the great sagas, copied to disc, thrown down:
the Western Ghats, rivers, far vistas—
Epics written in blood-ink, then singed wisps—
No escape or running free:
his gaze, his hand strong enough to crush men.
Gods watched from a stone bench, seated, rolling
dice, their laughter, thunder—
how they longed to see such peals:
Era, epoch, eons later, and only that one time—
Although we had been gone for years
eyes shining, our rough hands cupped a seedling
ankles shackled, we bent to kiss our earth.
That stretch of coastline, laser-cut and fading——
Bill of Lading for Masks
Eastbound train jammed full of unmasked people
glances, those indeterminate voices—
Faster, faster, the snow-covered ground rose
higher than any tower, North Wind stinging
Her shawl undone, arms clutching a newborn.
We watched in silence as she tossed him up
already stilled, pale small fingers frozen
chilblains on his small toes, we had to burn
right there in the centre of everyone
oil-can rust, coal grate, orange flames flickering——
And then we went our separate ways, the night
steps resolving into steps, further from——
No one to see our broken smiles, falling
We’d remember—the power of the sun.
Scratched Disc: Recording of the Captives
The men said to each other,
“When your house is on fire,
you got to scream—”
The women hunched in trenches, ready to
shoot, fighters incarcerated, they said
no use to reboot that power station.
Those supply chains disrupted, all our food.
Together they called, for years evermore,
it were the Battle of Kingsway, it were——
The Notes of the Beekeeper’s Daughter
They burnt all our hives; they killed my mother
With her last breath, she made me write these down
She taught us edge-magic, twilight and dusk
dawn or the hours just before, tilted
entry points, lines, horizon opening:
We’d race to the West, to time the sunset
We’d kneel, eastward, even when overcast
She told us to spin, turn, counted centres
the gap between thumb and index, sextant
in silence or in song, we stepped forward
daughters of the light, our breath, vibrations
that carrier landing amid gunfire
kneeling and blindfolded, against a wall
three women, three men, their heads bowed, hands tied
She told us: fingertips to throat, temples
Circular, soft gaze at the moment of—
Oracle, beeswax built, tended by bees
Palace, those golden corners, six-sided
common and circular fit: tensile cell
those combs hanging wild, hunted, split open
heavy with nectar and pollen, straight lines
on the surface of—round, waggle, tipped scent
flower to flower, thy sweetness, a trail
irregular, murmuring to the sun
o new queen, o dowager drone, take flight
your cocoon spun, sealed royally and milked,
swarmed, a drone to mate, hatched each thousand egg:
time, then, the turning of this earth, ripped sting
ox born, honey fed, forever to sing.
The Map of the Last Knight
Midnight, a train station, and outside
candles in a shop window, shadows
torrents of rain, cobblestones, lone gunman
sunrise, cathedral and a crow calls three
letters written, tiny, script, red ink, smeared pages
that Tower bathhouse, crescent moon and waxing
dripping to red, sealed parchment, trembling hands.
Believer, they were told those secret names.
Resisters, run. Run faster, they all cried.
His knife, sharp, light, edge to fold, pulled tight and
gasps cut off at the quick, footsteps, cold stone:
weavers and their spells, waterfalls dancing
cavern underground, from where we would return.
Video Remnant of the Migrants
We set sail, star-guided, messages sent
below deck, nimble fingers curled paper
pushed spirals, long-necked apertures, green glass
once we were a part of the known world and yet,
our skies a torment, we could not see her.
Cyclones, the ravages of fault lines, cracked,
open——and we fell in———
The Parchment Scroll
Glued together, parchment pieces as one
stained scroll, unrolled long, rough tattered edges
vellum frontispiece attached, faint inscriptions:
Unfurled
Limitless circumference, we made this world
made this book and this book called you to us.
Six tapers lit, while outside, east winds howled.
Stroke by stroke, brush dipped into henna warmed—
Who will part our hair—soft, silken, to meet bone.
Bright morning sun: by evening, snow falls fast—
Faster, the years spooling ever backwards
with soft steps we will walk again, garden bound.
Banjaxed, shunned, cast out, we’ve burned our bridges
crossed, over, into——fled Perimeter.
We’ve longed for refuge: to sit, talk, drink—smoke
drifted, spiralling past our cold fingers.
Each flight from Mars, awakening, then
to find this oak box, these letters of men.
Chased to the Gate of the Spring Portal, 2050
Roaming deserted streets, girls sang letters
Spin, rotate, tilting and orbital, Our Sun—
Come ye, Aunty Pandy, sweep and cough
Come ye, Aunty Pandy, sidestep, and masked.
Oh, for skies on lockdown, air fresh, leaves green.
Homeward bound we promise, our hands still clean.
Girls and boys, soon to become beggars, call,
IED baby, your bombs, our arms, boom!
IED baby, inside, outside, boom!
The Great Abandonment
It were a coming together of drought.
It were a virus let loose, lock and key,
those protein receptors, encoded and—
It were fissures in the earth, deep fault lines.
It were mass migrations, lost belongings
that child set down, the waves of a beach.
It were any number of armed militias,
roaming as temperatures soared, then the ice.
Those roaring forest fires, farms let go.
We kept telling ourselves, unprecedented.
Over our shoulders, long looks at the past.
Those Beggar Boys with their songs and their paint.
Aunty Maria, her seeds, and her bees.
She searched for scientists, we watched them bleed.
The Five Catastrophes
By water, the soul
Tsunami, seepage
Cascading, eroded
By fire, the eyes
Scorched, singed
Blasted, burned
To melt—
By earth, the body
Trembling, split
Collapsed, on knees
Tumbled and crushed.
By wind, the voice
Blown, sifting syllables
Winnowed circumference
Made square by four
Ripped, torn, worn, howl—
It were the Battle of Kingsway, and after————
Followers of Aunty Maria
We who would walk Perimeter, those crows
a chorus, under feathers fluffed. Outside,
Rentalsman, honey locust, bare stands,
the thinnest trunks, Consortium-approved,
roots shallow
so as to not disturb—in our pockets
remnants, true felted, small quilt squares for masks,
Aunty Maria of Tyne and Church, all the streets now gone.
Fissured earth, snow a poison, yellowed edges, the shanty dogs
who would run to tear, what she held and rubbed
sewn circles, piece by piece—oh patch and mend—
Outside Perimeter no matter when
not enough tear gas to stop th
e screaming,
a group of street children found an oak box.
Someone told someone else: let’s ransom this.
And did they find a way to cart that box?
One gang to haul, another to throw stones.
Guards at Detention Centre C, laughing.
Hardly a glance.
Aunty Maria’s Clandestine Harvest
In those days, she carried always,
The Book—at her hip,
My Garman,
she called it, banned.
All the Beggar Boys called out, Aunty M!
All those Sword Girls smiled and said,
Come fight us for favour, come lose your limbs.
No guards of the gate ever dared laugh.
In this way, distractions, to allow for:
cherished, when gathering Ninebark,
in star-shaped hairs, imported leaves
Physocarpus spirea,
city opening along one seam,