Connections. & MORE By Tamiko Dooley

And the boys are naming metro stations / Ochiai, Kanda, Shibuya / You can learn the game by watching us play it, they smile / The names keep on coming, turning eastbound / Ginza line crossing the Chiyoda line / The colours spin in my mind ...READ MORE

First Afra purrs like an American Bobtail. Then her prodigious arms flail like the jubilant wings of a duck. And then she purrs again, at least she tries to. Improvisation on these subtle features is her solitary affair.

Hollow out a loaf of bread
           Crawl inside
Wrap yourself in leaves of rocket, lettuce & baby
                                spinach
Lick salt off your fingers
           Stick your feet in honey socks

For decades, the sound would be ceaseless: the alarms, the sirens, the faults and errors; the seismic death rattle of technology unmanned; the animals of the streets would flee and in the wild seek shelter from the cacophony, becoming new prey to old predators.

i call myself the lyon man
who sits awake all night
who smokes and drinks
and thinks and stalks
through theme parks
searching for spectacle

I’m going to keep my baby
pricks splice needles
my legs split open,
On the cold table
blood, I offer up
unlocks struggles,
rugged from within, the placenta
I push hard, my daughter comes

Remember we said we would get to the beacon one day?

With driftwood, boys joust
Girls shape hearts with shells
beside the darkened lighthouse

The wind in October
cuts through her felt,

pressing the escape
of late fruits and seeds

over the dangling light
of fresh wool and fog.