SCENERY
“When you own a big chunk of the bloody third world
the babies just come with the scenery.” Chrissie Hynde – Middle of the Road
snapshots of heaven
spill out of
the open wallet’s
unfolding plastic
inserts and
in each
photograph
clouds obscure
the scenery
whatever might lie
on the other
side is
divided between
public
opinion, private
qualms
and the spectre
of order
here on this side of
the lens
the focus
gravitates toward
disorder
spanning home and
abroad so as to bury
a thin blue
pulse
worming under
scorched
furrows or behind
a steamed up
shaving
mirror or
inside
the question
that soon
passes
when indignation
becomes
part and parcel of
privilege
the landscape
repeats
like a screen
saver’s möbius
strip
stripped down
the middle
all roads
taper off
into a razor
slit
between earth
and sky
two scenarios in
tandem
the scorched
mirror and
the steaming
furrow
the public spectre
and the private
disorder
this one-
sided
duality unfolds
möbius-like
to reveal
stop-motion clouds
parting and
parcelling
out (cherubs
not
included)
an eggshell tinged
void
sil-
hou-
etted
by a privilege
of wallets
flying
in V
for-
ma-
tion
obscured no more
this scenery
shimmers
in the mind
as a
gateless
communion
a heaven
of snap-
shots
About the author:
Steven Mayoff was born and raised in Montreal, later on lived in Toronto, and moved to the bucolic splendor of Prince Edward Island, Canada in 2001. His fiction and poetry have appeared in literary journals across Canada and the U.S., as well as in Ireland, Algeria, France, Wales, England and Croatia. He has written two books of fiction: the story collection Fatted Calf Blues (Turnstone Press, 2009) and the novel Our Lady Of Steerage (Bunim & Bannigan, 2015). Upcoming is poetry collection Swinging Between Water And Stone, to be published by Guernica Editions in 2019.
Fabrice Poussin is advisor for The Chimes, the Shorter University award winning poetry and arts publication. His writing and photography have been published in print, including Kestrel, Symposium, La Pensee Universelle, Paris, and more than 300 other art and literature magazines in the United States and abroad.