Issue 16, March 1998
Colin Will - Poem

We sit and talk
on two sides of a cleaving table.
My hearing's pooring,
and yours is deadened
by a crowding natter of voices.

We give up space, we turn on turn
evade, admit, conspire, and care.
We take alternate witness stands
on the nights of the lives that have built
or broken us.

I'm writing a manual
on the construction of ruins;
you seem to inhabit
a street in demolition.

Between us, though, there's more
than two gulls choking over recognition.
If we can't always share, we can at least point
and want to follow,
and each can climb over bridges of words
to claim the keys of the sky.