STORIES FROM 

THE PUBLIC DOMAIN/ 

STORIES WITHOUT PROVENANCE 

I must tell you before I forget
how the city never looked
lovelier than it does now,
vapourising in incandescent light,
its frantic plea for help unanswered,
I know it was less than a fair trial,
when first I heard those rumors
I’d not taken them seriously,
but he was the web-foot man
who could never dance, with
restlessness his true companion,
these words from the man
who is nobody

I must tell it all before memory goes,
as the voyage ends, all I can see is
that if only the priests had been of the
same denomination, it might be different,
how they sleep savagely in gold leaf and fire
instead of preaching and dancing
their total abstinence, remorse is
a slow disemboweling and the need
to dance the sickness out of myself,
before the fetters of literacy
fall forever from the world
this from the man who is now nobody
nobody at all


Published in:
‘MINOTAUR No.73’ (USA – May 2015)
this wonderful current print-issue includes other work
by Edward Mycue, Eleanor Watson-Gove, Peter Asher,
Barbara Bowen, Claire Partridge & many others,
just 5 dollars from Jim Watson-Gove at
2019 Summit Way, Port Townsend, WA, USA