OLD TESTAMENT PLAGUES IN NEW MILLENNIUM CITY
Inboxes swarm with junk mail locusts.
Flies of stress buzz in corridors
and settle in meeting rooms.
Silicone boils gather
and a collagen plague
sweeps the cattle markets. Viruses pulsate
through electronic veins and erupt
on traders’ screens.
The rivers of the underground
run red with anger.
No one is spared.
TERMITE MOUNDS AT DAWN
Northern Australia
Silence is cruel, they always say,
but so is constant talk. If you were here,
you’d taste these endless cones of stillness
and smell their patience melting on your hands;
these sundials throw shadows but time is sleeping.
You would like to hear me say I miss you,
but there’s nothing I lack out here
except the secret of the mounds.
ELEVENTH VIEW OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS
Australian Antarctic Territory, last September
While the cross passes over
under bleeding sky signs,
the warming fist of air
presses the ice
till the world’s last firstborn
drowns
in the tearful pulse of the juice.
FOURTH VIEW OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS
Constantinople, 541 AD
The warm night air is sweet
and sick with sprawling death;
there’s no hope above.
Some old pagans placed a cross
below the centaur,
but it must have drifted out of sight
like a gnostic hierarchy.
There’s a greater cross on earth by now;
the emperor dragged it from the stars.
But who will stop the plague?
All published in Season 4 number 9 of Dreich magazine
S.C. Flynn 