DREAM VESSELS # 5: Shards of
Destruction
— from
a collage by Marsha Connell
Twilight comes
ponderously of age in the tropics.
Birds gather to watch
the jewels on the shores
of Waikiki glisten with
that peculiar illusion of light
when the blurring of
headlights becomes a serpent
winding along Ala Moana
Drive. Streets converge in an X.
A multitude of shoes
come to mind; Imelda's maybe—
Kept in her exiled
husband’s air-conditioned maseoleum
in the Valley of the
Temples, where he waits for a political thaw.
Above the white void,
it is equally difficult to hide,
or to find one's way to
the other side of the question.
Should it be so strange
to see skyscrapers rise
from the curved smile
of pots, or lipstick crosses
lodged between fixed systems of thought?
Blue macaws witness
iridescent missiles
shove the horizon
against the edge of the rainforest;
they wear broken shards
for cloaks of mourning.
The household of the
earth torn open,
labia pierced by the
jeweled cities;
the rapists asking if
she enjoyed it.
What's the use of
asking those kinds of questions
when even the birds
lean away from each other?
A bamboo torii gate
with enough sense to grow
out of the confines of
the sky cannot close the hole.
Broken vessels cut just
as well as shrapnel.
It's only the context
of violence which is different.
The boats in their
berths, coffins of light
crusade against the
darkness of the sea.
Summer 91 & 92
1992 Chaminade Review
DREAM VESSELS —from collages by Marsha Connell
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