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Ka'aba               He Repented

         Lots of Successful People and Me           Seventies oil prike hice

 

Ka'aba

 

The cuboid, swathed

in black brocade

is imageless:

an empty space

 

you might approach

as if it marked the spot

where Adam first gave thanks

after leaving Eden

 

where the merchant

cupped his palm around

the Virgin and her child

to spare them from destruction

 

where the moon descended

circled seven times

and passing through the Prophet split

to reappear as moon

 

Ed Reiss

first published in west 47 ,   8,
Galway Arts Centre. July-September 2002

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He Repented

 

in the glaring metropolis of cameras, knelt,

wept, chipped his name off her gravestone,

 

renounced all rights to her estate,

entrusted the children to a committee of sisters

 

and crept naked, as an exile, into

the kingdom of crows and silence.

 

He swore to live on dog-licks for ten years.

In raw February he crawled north, in sackcloth

 

and ashes. People leaned out of cars

and spat. Lined the bridges to stone him.

 

 

Ed Reiss

first published in Dreamcatcher , vol. 7,
Summer 2000, ISSN 1466-9455.
published in
The Great Refusal ,
ed. T.F. Griffin, Flux Gallery Press, 2005.
 
ISBN: 0-9550158-0-4

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Lots of Successful People and Me

 

Adam in Saskatchewan researches large animal internal medicine.

Becky is head-hunted from Coventry Piston Ring Co. to Conoco-Philips (Caracas).

Clive heads a leading hedge fund consultancy.

Davinda discovers the crystal structures of avian retrovirus proteins.

Ewan cycles across Central Asia. It’s never been easier.

Francesca is delighted to announce the arrival of a beautiful baby daughter, Lucy,

                a sister for Lisa. “Babies are more challenging than bosses.”

Gav develops Accelerator and Large Experimental Physics Control Systems in Korea.

Hannah analyses the deep solar interior.

I live and work in Bradford.

 

Ed Reiss

published in The Great Refusal ,

ed. T.F. Griffin, Flux Gallery Press, 2005.

ISBN: 0-9550158-0-4

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Seventies oil prike hice

 

In Wunbridge Tells,

a Colonel meads his porning raper,

brounds the pektast fable.

Soil rices prise by an actor of fix!

The Crock Market stashes.

Blocks and gactory fates are docked

by licket pines of pying flickets.

The sheaking crip of rate is on the stocks.

 

After seer and bandwiches at Drowning Steet

the Mime Prinister spakes his wong-elated meech

on the nate of the station. Who Boverns Gritain?

But the pineless spittish brublic votes: the C.U.T.

What lope is heft? The gland of grope and whorey’s

pone to got. Britannia’s on the sloppery slipe.

And now, to boot it all, a heaker strurdles

the lumps on the tallowed hurds of Storf.

 

The Colonel times to the Write :

Sir, I am reechless with spage…

 

 

Ed Reiss

published in The Yellow Crane,  27, Autumn 2005

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