Ans cite a

The Other Press

 

 

 

Friday Night Dance

Guitar-wielding, eight-legged horse,
electric phallic, 4 princes on stage
in stroboscopic fire, in name of Frig,

provoke berserker in boy, the girl
detonates riot, mouthing miracle

as boy becomes angel, white eyes,
his dance is bread. Heat in hall,
vibration in body transmuted shakes
through banging door to grassy park.
Buttocks mushroom, under spotlight,
penetrating head, angry russet,

of moon in battle...

Rack of china
under mothers’ hands, tghe dance ranckles.
Mortal, it breathes vowels, patrol-car
sirens, the slapping young-blood groans.
Mirrors on the dark their eyes open,
glint and stream. They rise, advance
to parked cars, stereos raving on.
Headlights reach out, seize, board
switchbacks on the hill, beams under stars
slash. Appeased, Mr Moon savours
their helicopter shout...

I am hostage here, home on hill.
What young wife, tall and straight,
moving in a ball of light, will place

in upturned palm a prize or drink?
Sun-streaming face, what girl come
ask of the fight, nurse my would

that festers wild and heals sweet

in this earth-room, hovel under hedge!

1977

 

Blinking Mandalas of Broken Glass

Another skein unravels now, from the spindle that
never moved, in a cabin without locks I

found, climbing chalk cliffs above Whitehorse

a seventh-gsade truant wonder ago. - Orestes,

I’m thinking, struck out at his bad luck,
hag-plagued, to climb some Sinai,

cross his eyes, a breeze, the book says,
stirring in his soft hair, and witness sun

inspirited rock, too. Before the museum: copper,
a massive slab, sleight-coaches, a steam-engine;
dead guns, under gilt-framed placards |

(inside) - the white and knowledgeable grin

of the murders. Massacree Flats, up-graded now,
I see’s cleared away the overturned punt that
housed the first fragrant punk of my semen with
**Ai!l Ai!l’’ yelping of a salmon-skinned girl,

mineral fugue I almost hear. In the river I’ve

lost a second time sundance blinking mandalas

of broken glass. The cabin’s been boarded up. -
gutted, the distaff spinning (only) in wonder.

 

 

Alex Kazuk: Previously published in O.P. Oct. 30
& Nov 12, ’81.

Biography: ‘‘Travelled to Vancouver from my birth-
place in a wicker basket, age one. Never got over
it. Lived in a dozen different towns in B.C. ’till
early 70’s, when I chased down to California for a few
years. Never saw a star . . moved to Peace River

. . » where I feel most at home . . .Been in love
since before puberty. Never got over that either.
Writing is a genuine obsession for me -- some kind of

a birth desire trauma? . . . respond strongly to my
immediate environment. . . Always losing love, I’ve
found consolation in contemplating where I am -- not
how I am or will be. The question ‘‘Why?’’ -
is blasphemy in my book.”’

Alex Kazuk , —