Mercedes Webb-Pullman 

today she is Kapiti Island

 

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Never for the last time

 

Your words will never arrive

they’ve tangled in your wife's stockings

piled haphazard in a corner 

from the flurry of undressing

caught in the slut's wool under your bed

that floats the ocean between us, impervious

as the Titanic. They skitter into cracks

like cockroaches surprised in a silent room

drip like Amaretto dregs from upset glasses

of a Sunday afternoon siesta, trail as stale 

cigar smoke from the delivery suite 

where whores give birth to freedom

amidst sirens of defibrillation and 

flat lines that join armpit to crutch

in a sad encompassing of pi.

 They have taken over the dead 

letter office, run rampant through paddocks

of rosemary and rue, picked by prisoners

under a pointed moon that stabs

through my window with the indifference 

of an arcane rule of grammar

unenforceable on this wet afternoon

where cliffs of clouds call for surrender

to the distance between never

and the last time.

 

​

Another dream of Alexandria

 

heat roils from baking sands,

wavering lines

of date palms and walls

appear and vanish, over there

where Cleopatra‘s barge is landing.

 

a cooler breeze brings

bells, incense, distant carnival sounds;

another dream of Alexandria

 

my father was wounded here

where he killed his first man 

one of countless thousands

who came to Alexandria for war, or fame

or love; to confront gods

on their home ground

 

when Pan abandoned Anthony

dark things grew

in these narrow alleyways

each shrine more secretly hidden

each sacrifice zealously guarded

handed down

through generations

 

the prehistoric memories

of things;

stones demanding blood

 

they who hear

cover mirrors

turn coins over

and obey

 

my legs are smooth along

the goat-man’s hairy flanks

 

swift as thought we’re on the quay

where smoke hides the lighthouse

same café as always

shows bright against a reddened sky

loud with revelry

 

as always

I’m straining to hear

echoes of one exquisite tune

that curls and floats, fragile as ash

through air

 

your lover was here, now he’s leaving

the players move away

 

this is my reward and sentence

to be fully aware

of origami permutations

folding time’s abyss 

so in this moment

all possible moments exist

except Pan, turning back

 

perfumes, silk and gold

all prowess, power, fame attained

is worthless now

 

no, there is only this

endless night in Alexandria

where the sound of my lover leaving forever

slowly fades away

 

​
 

Desert Interlude

 

-when the nun sticks

her chewing gum up under the altar, you’re put

off by her habit

 

but before you can recall that the seed

of heaven is not heaven

though it is a seed 

 

-when the novices’ veils

 in the Nevada desert

smell ‘oversunny’ –

rosary beads past fingers clicking

 

but before you can remember

that the seed of heaven 

is exactly heaven, though still a seed 

 

- confused them into putting

their dresses on as well.  It isn’t as if

the choice is green or nothing, 

like the cover of a book

 

like those sailors in the solar peace and never

do habits feel damp, until

you bite your brother’s Barbie.

 

You’re not at all sure he is your father

 

but before you can reiterate that habit

is heaven, that the seed of heaven

is both heaven and a seed, so

 

the degree of curve in the tongue

of an opened soup or sardine tin

is nothing the same as his

 

and before you can repudiate the seed

of heaven 

 

- the sun has set blue

for all those who will be met

 

​

A Balkan story from 1683

 

Who could blame her? Prisoner

of her own besieged city

starving amongst the dying, perhaps

she went willingly.

She woke under a crystal chandelier

in a purple tent, tricked out 

in gold-embroidered silk

centred in a crescent of gardens

where fountains plashed perfumed water.

She’d seen no clean water for weeks,

had fought others for the flesh of cats

roof rabbits they called them

and sucked their slender bones.

No wonder she preferred the comforts

of the Vizier‘s harem to the misery of

her city under siege.

 

Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha’s skull 

claimed later by his Sultan for failure 

still exists, somewhere in the city’s bowels.

No one kept the head 

of the nameless beauty

captured in Vienna.

The Vizier decapitated her 

after his defeat.

His blonde slave

and his beloved ostrich

bled out together

under the sumptuous chandelier

on a carpet like a field of jewels.

 

​

today she is Kapiti Island

 

she has been stronghold

storehouse, waystation 

refuge and prison

 

expression of thrust 

from underlying strata

 

treading water, she gulps air

grins her shark-toothed grin

bites chunks from the sky

​

 

Mercedes Webb-Pullman was DM's 2019-2020 Artist-in-Residence She writes from New Zealand.

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