1.
Yanked crisply
into movement
like a trout
caught napping …
on judgement – its arcs
the cartoon reel
I suited up in
inadvertently
that all-aboard morning
warbled groggily
through credits …
of Albanian dawn
credits of sparrows
crank-wheeled
and lured our carriage
clean into scene
one
2.
Dead-bang at six
a resolute
mechanical
holy-Christ! of a halt
eschewing regional bolt-
action rifles
blushing hot
with usurp
Our carriage, then owning
the daybreak
owning the split
thighs under silence
how a track-and-field star
hurdling electrons
trips fission
in a sequence
of takes
3.
Field workers
grandmothers
and field
clogged the steps up
pylon mirages
warped into locals
on approach
load-bearing baskets
cucurbits and rabbits
figs
a full-cotton Haj
lured to orbit
and board government
tracks (or Kadare’s vomit)
conducted by intervals
in burn-times
of Greek cigarettes
4.
My compartment …
settled to ours
a colonialism
loud in reverse
a land-grab peeled
how celeriacs
enforce
in quiet bonanza
of repatriated
comfort
my knees
double-booked
into shelf
a morning’s box
of waxy potatoes
got teetered
one tumbled out
lured by floorspace
two dozen eyes
located on radar
it scrambled by feet
5.
Atop my head
windswept by physics
equated as ledger
I marooned it
fluent in numerator
this fraction of spud
vertiginously game
on its balance
of comic relief
interlocutor of me
greyer than bricks
top comrade Hoxha
lured into these guts
but not greyer than maybe
one lone halved-potato
a reinforced barracks
that glissando instructs
succinctly our tone
slid up to grin
a foreigner’s Vaudeville
primed to maintain