new zealand electronic poetry centre
     


  


John   O’Connor

Fugacity 05
Online Poetry Anthology


index

The Only Show in Town

April 2002

in Ramallah
the tourist trade’s
in the doldrums, scarcely
a breath of foreign
currency.

the concierges
wait behind their desks
hoping for the bright
clatter of WASPS,
the irrelevant mateship
of Ockers, the superior
vowels of the English.

in kitchens
chefs are frustrated
in stairwells
housemaids get frantic
in banks
tellers go mad for want of silver …

& in the streets
people look around them in wonder

at the flowering turrets of tanks
at the way arteries spout —
even from a child

 

 
 


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Last updated 25 April, 2005