Island Men's Journal Article

POETRY

Two-sided Christ

if Gabriel, double-winged and daring, had split the chromosome and annunciated sibling twins, double x, xy, and Mary's womb magnified a duet in her magnificat, and wise men brought west gifts for shaking bones...

one Christchild could have

prime-died, crucified

tasting death splitside

as sacrificial prophecy

and celibate

centrepoint on the carpenter cross.

the other,

like a Donne love compass, could have run circumference, done the birth splits, savoured till the tongue buds mislaid taste and lived on the point when, lying pierced by a calcified side, she hears the cells dying.

Middle Passage Pirate

old friend, midships the forty seven seas, timber-shivered, listing and scarved in sunset red, heave your cutlass heartily under a blackflag flutter, roll a crow's nest eye at the blackpatch sun, and stomp your silver longjohn splinter at the plankshark, quartering below deck in an underwater walk. like a pirate parrot-perched,

irate and eager,

cross skull-white bone,

waiting in water

extra territorial,

raid stately galleons,

scythe the sky with your hook

and ransack the ocean of age.