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Poems by Jennifer Rees

of dead men and elephants
tags: elephants; death; marguerite poland; shades

down down
in the deepest of
hollows

lies a figure
poland’s crispin
could see
in ground-clouds

a leather elephant
that takes leave
of its descendants

and leathery men
whose quiet goodbyes
signal passing

the body
d
r
o                                                                            t
p
shoulder first                                s
then elbow                   u
into the        d

spine
buttocks
levering legs
follow

curl
and furl
into the dust-burrow

of dead men
and elephants

 

in all (fair)ness
tags: africa; lady justice; poetry; decay; resilience

Lady justice

where fumy paint adorns
freshly acknowledged shells
trending on twitter
loving the glitter
(until the next big thing)

but lady justice is
waiting

for more rape
more village-pillage
of already-ruins

or to age gracefully
on slow-to-die walls

to be loved in lenses
and/or
words

to say:
here lies lady justice
amongst wire
stones and
city-shit

to be looked upon
(like danté retching out words)

on his blindness
in her blindness
in all (fair)ness

(struck by this lady-on-a-wall in the heart of cape town and decided to get lost so we’d have to drive down the same road again.)

 

trop de bruit
tags: too much noise; the world is too much with us; French

Scientist

(don’t ask. i don’t know.)

i can never
quite fathom
why the french
must say

“too much of noise”

as if the voluminous echoes
from radio and street
are a cake

to halve
quarter
slice up to share

as if ambulance
honking
shouting
and bonking

were hallowed slices
of black-forest gateau

of sponge
of chocolate
and sugary snow