Poem

We Are Experiencing Delay

We are experiencing a delay due to a body on the tracks

the broadcaster drones. Fluid pools in lower limbs that have been disowned.

A body is experiencing delay among the ballast and the black.

We throttle our tabloids like pillowcases, as if to rid the newscasts

of their creases, though headlines cannot compete with the coroner megaphone.

We are experiencing a delay due to a body on the tracks.

No one is reading a love letter behind a Henry James hardback.

Neither sympathies, books nor lovers have been taken out on loan.

A body is experiencing delay among the ballast and the black.

Aside sleepers, we search Perseus’s shield for cracks:

we see our sorry forms in darkened perspex. We are not as we are shown.

We are experiencing a delay due to a body on the tracks.

Home is an idea that comes and goes. The idea is carried on our backs;

now silk-lined, now boned. All there is of its embodiment are steppingstones.

A body is experiencing delay among the ballast and the black.

There will be no tombstone in the landscape for a page marker, for a fact.

The speaker intones: We will not be long. Headlines, epitaphs: He is not alone.

We are experiencing a delay due to a body on the tracks.

A body is experiencing delay among the ballast and the black.