By: Frank Finney
Unsayable
‘… And when words go,
Nothing much remains’. Martin Amis
The therapist told me
to find my voice
as if I hadn’t been looking
even when she wasn’t.
It turned up one day
in a gallery
on Orchard Road,
but I lost it again
on the plane to Paris,
drowning out the turbulence
with a twist-off Chablis.
The solo in the bone shop
nearly sent me to the bughouse.
I sat there scratching,
not saying a word.
Two months later I was back to work
nodding and scribbling,
not saying a word.
The Passing of Poodles
(quatre vignettes pour les caniches)
1.
Nanette: hit on a holiday
by a cowboy in a Mack who cursed his luck
before driving away.
2.
Monique: mowed down in the middle
of Old Great Road by a woman in a wagon
wearing socks that glowed.
3.
Charee: my favorite, lived the longest
of the three till she was struck down
with epilepsy.
4.
Three dogs take turns now, walking me,
when I visit their bones
at the pet cemetery.
Frank William Finney was born in Massachusetts and educated at the University of Massachusetts and Simmons University (formerly Simmons College). HIs work has appeared in over 100 publications including RE:AL—The Journal of Liberal Arts (Texas), The Maryland Poetry Review, (USA), Orbis: an international quarterly of poetry and prose (UK), Paris/Atlantic (France), Offerte Speciale (Italy), The Nation (Thailand), and The Best of the Vine Leaves Literary Journal (Australia). He currently lives in Bangkok, Thailand, where he is a senior lecturer at Thammasat University.
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