“Last Leaves’ Issue 3 | Fall 2021

 

 

NEVINBUMBAAN RETURNS

the women in black are
on the trains, walking, crawling
carrying hurt and placards,
they’re tearing down the
wounded sky, riding the river
of steel and glittering revenge
knitting up the sky again with
skeins of blood and afterbirth

the women in black are bearing aloft
women dumped in parks and laneways,
abandoned in kitchens and shallow graves
reanimating an angry, ghostly army

men are hiding behind their
phallic masks and important meetings
their secret business, initiation
rites and cases of defamation
worried they’ll be consumed by
Nevinbumbaan, the cannibal goddess

—the women are marching

 

 

OUTSIDE IGA

 

Outside IGA the beanied

man’s guitar riffs Stairway

to Heaven, each note ascending

to the tops of trees, arrowing into

that impossible blue

 

Down on the beach a father

and his small son stand

hand-in-hand, sculpted

from the thin air of expectation

gazing towards the puzzling ocean

 

I walk towards my waiting friend

—I know behind her mask

she’s smiling

 

We’re all just lighting candles

at the Shrine of the

Madre de la Esperanza