Issue 6: David Chorlton

by Paula Lietz

Aftermath

A pleasure boat rests

on a building’s roof;

two vehicles lie still

like a pair of dice

rolled for luck;

the people waiting

to buy food

all turn their faces toward

the burning power plant;

two white umbrellas move

across a bare patch

among acres of destruction;

a house sails away

with its front window

facing the sky;

coffins float in pale rows

on a blue floor;

a finger traces the names

on lists pinned to a wall

and a man in his ceramic store

holds two halves of a plate

to show the jagged fault line

where it broke.

David Chorlton lived in England and Austria before moving to Arizona in 1978. After publishing several poetry collections, his newest book is The Taste of Fog, from Rain Mountain Press, his first work of fiction, and the result of a long-standing interest in Vienna’s shadow side.

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Issue 5: David Chorlton

The Righteous

            The righteous love to kill for their faith.

                                    --Charles Simic

My friend in California called again

last week to tell

me that the Devil was living

in his house. I imagined

the unwelcome guest with his feet up

on the couch, sipping

margaritas through a straw

and badmouthing the saints. The problem

was his obvious

intelligence and the conviction

in his arguments

against God. The tone

in my friend’s voice

was fearful and resigned. I tried

to tell him not to worry, that the Devil

was really here in Arizona

where serious arguments end

in gunfire, as demanded by tradition.

You can see the handlebar moustaches

on billboards east of Tucson

selling the Gunfight

at the OK Corral as the most famous

thirty seconds of our history. They have

been stretched to more than a century

and always end in applause.

It’s been happening for so long

we can’t distinguish theatre from life

when neither outlaws nor believers

load with blanks.

David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in England, and spent several years in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in1978. He has several collections, but takes special pleasure in a very short poem that appears beside John Clare and others in BIRDS, an anthology from the British Museum.

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Issue 4 - David Chorlton

January 31st

A sudden shower blew down the street this morning

following the news from Cairo

about protest and the usual

analysis of what it means

for this country when another country’s president

has fallen. The sparrows in the oleander

don’t stop singing all day.

Birds in cities

around the world are growing louder

to overcome traffic noise. Some have begun

to forage at night. There is no curfew

for birds when change

roosts beside them. British sparrows

are declining. When presidents disappear

there are new ones easily found

but even familiarity

cannot save the sparrows and nobody

is saying what it means for us

when another country’s birds are falling.

Day of Desert Winter

It’s cold today like broken glass,

like a raven’s lost call

flying, like the crack

in a porcelain cup that has nowhere to stop

and grows into a faultline

across the desert where the wind

can’t find a foothold

and cuts its teeth on the bones

an owl coughed out in the dark.

The light on a dry riverbed freezes over.

--David Chorlton

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Issue 2: David Chorlton

Postcards from Along the Fence

I

This is a nice enough spot

to spend a few days

if you like sparse vegetation

and perspective.

When nobody else is around

the fence appears so natural

you’d think it had been here first

and the desert was planted around it.

II

Some people say the fence is ugly,

that it spoils the view

toward the mountains in the south,

but when you think of it as art

it becomes a river of steel

flowing between banks of light

and there’s no way short of magic

to get across.

III

Yesterday we stopped off

to see the graveyard

for the nameless ones

who died while crossing over.

There are plenty of vacancies.

You just climb into the hole

and someone comes along

to bury you. You don’t even

need papers.

--David Chorlton

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Issue 2: David Chorlton

A Caution to the Mapmaker

The easy part is marking

where mountains rise through desert,

grass and woodland

until a single peak prevails

but you will never map the thunderhead

gathering around it.

You can measure any journey

taken through a canyon

and away from the roads

without ever knowing

the pace of the heart that powers it.

Lightning draws faster than you can.

Whatever you commit to paper

the rain will wash away

in repeated monsoons.

You record the terrain

while smugglers and the jaguar

find their way by scent

and memory;

they will still be here

after being declared extinct.

--David Chorlton

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