after Joseph Conrad
By: Ian C. Webb
The King of Belgium stroked his sepia beard, with
a spin of the globe, found a gap on the map, and
money that grows in the trunks of trees, awaiting the turn
of the bicycle wheel. Léopold’s Ville. Along
the length of the kerbside, through drizzle and dusk, gust
the wax of thousands of pieces of light, and the pale,
brown hues of flaccid bouquets, beneath the curves
of the Boulevard’s ‘Style Congolese’. The feverish
Mr. Marlow had stumbled through Straat and Laan
and Rue, had sneered at the frock-coated lining of pockets,
the city’s assurance of “perfect safety”. Walking
for miles for fear of the Metro, our shot nerves cling
to the trails of boots and beret, are soothed by the twitchy,
umber-gloved, tap on the semi-auto’s safety-catch.
Ian C. Webb lives in Bath Spa, England. A founder member of Poet's Voice at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, he has had work published by Poetry Salzburg Review, the French Literary Review, BRSLI, Snakeskin and The Charles Carter.