From ASSIMILATION
            by David Chorlton

Assimilation

A letter falls from the end of a word
then the emphasis shifts
from one syllable to another
and the process has begun.

Forget the old songs
with accordion accompaniment.
Check your new location daily
on the map
and cut away the portion
that shows where you came from.

File your accent down
until the edge has disappeared
and learn the art
of imitation.

When television moves in
to keep you company
and catalogues arrive in the mail
instead of letters from old friends
you are closing in on citizenship.

Comb your hair
in the dominant language,
practice speaking to the mirror
until your face looks like those
that used to stare at you.
Only your clothes

are left of the person you were.
Press them into an album,
keep it among your souvenirs
and you can finally go outside,
one of the crowd,
invisible.

 

THE LANDSCAPE OF TRUE AND FALSE
        The graveyard
         was filled with Indians
         below ground. Plastic flowers littered
         the mounds;
                                    – Ramona Weeks
                    (from The Indian Graveyard)

 

Each of the desert’s extinctions left its vertebrae
strung out as a mountain chain
waiting to be reassembled
so we can see the earth shrug off the rain again
and burrow into its darkness
to sleep for a thousand stormy years.
Before roads, the mantis raised its long body
to the height of a saguaro
and looked around at erosion crawling
among thirsty valleys, moons slipped through
the needle eyes in bright rock
and before the gods learned to speak
the terrain was ground between fires underground
and the silent clouds.
With the coming of words
names grew in sandstone crevices
and human shadows burned into the stones
remained after those who cast them
took their stories into the caves
where slow water continues
to chisel the walls
with a jeweler’s attention to detail
as precise as that of languages
in which all things are possible
and flowers the colour of memory
never die.

 

 

 

Coming Of The Moth

 

 

A moth has been flying for centuries
waiting to reveal itself
when the air is dry
and thirst spreads its fur deep into our throats.
We are chosen
as hosts. Should we prepare by fasting
or refusing to drink
until we are parched?
Shall we discern it from our dreams
when it appears? We hear
that a comet portends its arrival
and the pattern on the wings
has been copied from a map
where the mountains are black and the rivers
are brushed with a hair.
The rumours say it comes disguised as a brooch
taken from a frozen wedding dress.
Will it burst into flame when it lights
on the window screen
or turn to dust at a touch?
Many claim to have recognized the moth
but saw only a missing word
borne on a fragment
of an ancient manuscript.
How large, how hungry, how old
will it be when it gets here?
We ask so many questions
that fear is our hair growing long while we wait.

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