����������party people
����������all around me
����������feeling hot hot hot
����������������~ Arrow, "Music for Montserrat"

homesick i defrost my freezer
& make a snowball to celebrate carnival
at christmas. when the last of the sun
has bled into flamboyant trees, we sneak
to the shack for paper sacks of fried chicken.
the night cloaks rust & fuzzed layers

of grease, hides the mange of the cook's cur.
i think of my pup in the states
knocking balls from the tree, sniffing
pigs' ears in her stocking - so differently loved
than this one married to an overturned drum
by a stingy length of chain.

the drum's a home
����������������������the drum's the music

one afternoon, i watched a man temper steel,
sink the pan, groove the notes & it's these songs
we follow on frangipani to a shanty of bamboo
& corrugated tin - a last stop for glasses
of iceless rum / all they have / before dancing
over the edge of soufriere. as we go

watery eyes barely leave the checkers,
the man on the left is showing
his pecker broken zipper no cares here.


� 2003 by PJ Nights

previously published in MiPo Print