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Clade Song 4

Hot Night

 
Percussion has gone wild.
The insect aspect is anything but set in aspic.
The night fidgets and hits its 'aitches like itches.
Music of the all-insect jazz improv orchestra
pulses like ancient breathing in the twilight,
the steel-wool sh-sh of the snare drum,
distant cymbals,
a tinny trilling, thrice times trice
times time.
Riffs waft across the tree trunk,
catching on the bark,
snatching hooch from flowers,
hardening the sky's arteries,
while the tree fades
black into the backdrop.
Time is stymied, I'm mimetic,
changing into Kafka's creature
ever so surely
until the only
sound left on
earth is
ch.

 

 

 

 

 
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June Goodwin June Goodwin has had around 40 poems published in literary magazines in the U.S. (Opium Magazine, Gettysburg Review, first issue, Wisconsin Review and Southwest Review, among others) and she is the author of two non-fiction books on South Africa (Cry Amandla, Holmes & Meier, 1985, and Heart of Whiteness with Ben Schiff, 1995). Under a pseudonym she and her husband had two thrillers published by Pocket Books in 1989, 1990. From 1976 to79 she was reporter in Africa for The Christian Science Monitor. She has also worked for Reuter News Agency in London and New York City.