|
|
- Editorial
- ESSAY: 'Malta’s Jonah Complex' by Antoine Cassar
- ESSAY: Incongruity and Scale by Ivan Callus
- ESSAY: Writing on the Edge by Raphael Vella
- ESSAY: Mute Stage by Simone Spiteri
- ESSAY: On approaching a language from outside its crèche by Walid Nabhan
- PROSE: Monologue of the gravedigger by Clare Azzopardi
- PROSE: Four days by Immanuel Mifsud
- PROSE: I want to call out to Samirah by Pierre J. Mejlak
- PROSE: Gerita by Trevor Żahra
- PROSE: Everything is not by Walid Nabhan
- POETRY: Mario Azzopardi
- POETRY: Norbert Bugeja
- POETRY: Antoine Cassar
- POETRY: Joe Friggieri
- POETRY: Simone Galea
- POETRY: Adrian Grima
- POETRY: Maria Grech Ganado
- POETRY: Simone Inguanez
- POETRY: Nadia Mifsud
- POETRY: Albert Marshall
POETRY: Simone Inguanez
snapshots we weren’t shown before we arrived for us, since we cried at some pointhere
god’s design of
the women’s exacting
– their dark eyes
slot your pupils like drawers
here
kingdoms are wrought
out of smiles if you will –
neatly packaged and
freely doled out
for a pittance –
you dream
of warm isles
dripping dew if you will –
cast your forelegs
to angle in pools
till you tire and
they enter your bedroom
discreetly and
you’re still submerged and they leave
you get up and go
out and they enter
to brand the
bedsheets you’ve rumpled ’cause here
the women’s salam
and bonjour
is a sad-faced whisper you sip
– crumbs of drear
from their faces are caught in the aprons
frill-edged that
they smooth – slowly smooth
here
here the rocks run
aground in your ribcage
and swing at my
breast and I’m dragged by the foam
in my thirst
this water your
diluted eyes
that the salt has
unceasingly run and I’m tired of running
– my blistering
legs have fathomed this earth
the sun hadn’t woken as yet
– think awhile
Lines for your vacant eyes
i.
why is that –
sombre man of the sea – answer me?
why the dusk in your
eyes and beneath them?
and the silence –
this silence that sounds with the crying of somnolent gulls
lord of the castle –
answer me lord of the castle
I knocked – why
did you lock the door?
let down your
sweat-soaked hair
your pain is a mute
contagion
let me in let me
heal let me heal you
you’re an island
it’s true but the waves lap my shore
– I’ve been
lulled by the foam and their sigh
I’ve been lulled –
having let myself go I’ve been lulled – why is that?
I dreamed you man of
shadow the wells of your eyes
– sunrise in their
depths
imbuing the salt in
irregular pans
not the stagnance of
water or mudflats
not the retch of
pisswater and larvae
– this beverage
that rinsed your unknowable hurt
I know not – I just feel
ii.
the sea barred me
tonight it refused me
– in my moaning and
gasping and trembling
the unceasing desire
of the dark waves the rime
and the sails and
the thunk of the anchors – the thunk of the anchors just listen
the sounds of a
grave disinterred and the waiting
the fear of the
opening wail the first shriek
a blistering curse
god be damned
then the second the third
why leave us
behind why did you? take me with you
– my love –
let me go
and the flowers we
picked for the burial
and the crucifix and
the incense
the buttons so taut
they were bursting get down
you’ll get one
in the eye
– one in the eye
for you
and the wormeaten
neck
and the vacant stare
in your eyes – bleary bloodshot
but vacant
iii.
a little boy now
wearing shorts and a
crewcut
tries to run through
the rocks and then stumbles
his father’s
attention’s elsewhere and then you
lord of the castle
on the island –
the boat you desired’s not there
I’d let myself go
if you’d come
I’ll take you myself if you want – and then leave