Reverse-Charge Phonecall
Faint singing in the wire
and I know that it’s you
electrical conversation in
the hiss and whimper
of near silence
there’s a breath, then a
sigh
and a dog barking from some
faraway backyard
the untearing of lips
from each other
before you speak
that half-second, that eternity
says everything
of the oncoming
avalanche
our minds in chrysalis, ready
to fly
*
Internal Mambo
In the witching hour-
if someone stood atop those
corrugated garage rooftops
holding a megaphone, sleeves rolled
past their elbows, reflected starlight
in their dangling
collywobbles
and cyanide breathmint
vapour in the old 37 bus route
direction
a pack of dogs orbit a cluster of
dustbins, apparitions on white wall
render- taxis rolling by but people
are distracted-
then I might be stirred from
openwindow slumber
Trinity Lodge overlooking the
waterworks, he’s stood on
a table, preaching. We were thirsty
then- me, a blood relative and
the simpleton.
He was jabbering, spilling
that they’d shut a whole club down
once because of him
and his ‘twisted internal
mambo’
if the man on the roof had a
message
not unlike the one that night
in the hostel-
a crowd has gathered
and someone’s saying “what’s he
saying?”
“Nish.Nothing.Zilch”
a policeman spits
“just a bunch of nonsense”
-if his sermon was mining
from that same vein
then I’d listen- be sure that I’d
be there in my
nightgown
with my ears
open,
revolving like
static satellites
that have woken up.
*
Waste Disposal
I’m daydreaming now, as the train hums into life. I picture myself at the heart of the tip, camouflaged. Methane escaping all around me. I’m barefoot with a fumigation mask around my face. I’m holding a long, carved wooden stick with a pointed metal tip. My job is to root out the rotting cadavers from the undergrowth and lay them side by side at the entrance. There’s hundreds of them, all in various stages of decomposition. I’m laying them out so they can be identified by their families. That’s my only job. That’s all I have to do.
*
A Break in the Clouds
Easy sleep, and life is
good for once. Life
clicks into that scene
where the music happens
and you see burnished fields
of maize in slow prayer
passing by from the asphalt.
The sun falling to the distant sea.
Then your eyes are closed
quite suddenly, and you realise
that the car is moving and
nobody is even steering;
but that’s no problem
because the road is
straight for another hundred
miles or so at least. And the
cliff at the end of it isn’t
nearly as tall as they said it
was. In fact it isn’t anything
more than a gentle slope down
into an azure rock pool. There’s
other cars there too, under
the water. They’re gleaming,
untouched by rust,
tail-fins immaculate.
Just sitting there.
*
Nick Power is a poet and short story writer. Small Town Chase, Holy Nowhere, and Caravan are published by Erbacce Press.
All work is the rightful property of the author and is distributed with their permission.
New Critique 
Reblogged this on Tales from the bottom of the bottle and commented:
Vibrant, tumultuous stuff from Nick Power and Sonder Magazine