Saturday, September 18, 2021

Mark Young Returns With A Cryptic Coffin Shoe, Noomi Rapace And Anna Akhmatova Fragments, The Performance Enigma, And An Altac In A Gulag


A line from Michelangelo


A new state of the art skate

park has more than forty

houses of worship within its

precincts, but still remains


monochromatic in its mourn-

ings. Weavers of flax mats sing

dirges, miners of peat wail

under incoherent light. That lamp


has burned for some time now. To

remind us that the foot is more

noble than its coverings, a single

shoe is placed on the coffin lid. 



A line from Noomi Rapace


I watch couples practice modern

dance. Even in their reflection

in a nearby window it is obvious

there is a hierarchy, & strict gender


roles. I find myself endlessly re-

playing situations in which I wish

I'd performed differently. It's a

bit of an enigma as to why I do it


because I really don't know which

hand is which, & that's how you

get bruised no matter what the out-

come. Another scenario involves a cat.



A line from Anna Akhmatova


I had to look up what alt-

ac meant, & even then

wasn't sure that it applied

to me. True, I worked out-


side of academia, yet had no

home to return to. The past

several months have been

agonizingly lonely. I was an


accidental guest in a place

where guest houses didn't

exist. Only gulags, & even

they didn't seem to want me.



Mark Young was born in New Zealand but now lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia. He has been publishing poetry for over sixty years, & is the author of around sixty books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, creative non-fiction, & art history. His most recent book is The Sasquatch Walks Among Us, from sandy press, & available through Amazon.