PRINT

Free Range Men
Nicola Easthope


We talk at a cellular level
swift flashing twsits late at night:

I miss u. LOVE.

I am sleeves of jersey knotted around waist.
I embrace you.

I am the Welcome Swallow darting up to you
from the Tairua River.

I am da nerves.sensing.da.pressure
between yr thumb and pen
as yr ink flows for da next 7 days.
Union.

I bought orange and blue flowers today.
Swoop flit fly riverkiss.

***

You are gone for seven days
so dreaming sends me the last two

in an overnight courier package
stickered International and Fragile.

Inside I find backpacks, skis, bikes,
take me backs in plangent echoes.

The Swede liked his snus
brown gloop dripping from glazed gums:

tobacco, arsenic, glass shavings
for fast uptake and keen avian focus;


the Swiss liked to toke up
on a mix of sweet dazing weeds:

a smokescreen of ganja and tobacco
to conceal angst and access to heart.

***

Without the glister one may expect
after a night with two foreign men,

I send them back to the glory hole:
thick filings, diaries and photographs –

a valued record of hearts in flight
now tidier for their revisiting slumber.

***

But you, you have no Yerba Buena,
just Dairy Milk, psi-trance and body cherishings.

You are the brightest light emitting diode
in this world of race-through red traffic light cycling.

***

For breakfast I eat a small
soft boiled egg

whose bedraggled yolk
is pale and overcast.

Five more twittering sleeps to go.

 

 

twsit – the song of the Welcome Swallow
snus – wet snuff
Yerba Buena – sweet herb/drug of choice