David A. Welch


AMY WINEHOUSE

Bees hoarse in ferment drowned
a towering hive torn down
dawn found the river of her panther hair
and the sweep of her neck along
it thrown

HEIDEGGER SILENTIO

Who can
say this
stone-
fold and
its there-
in, neither
ready to
nor
present

                    at

nah ist
ash,
asche,
aspen,
open-
ed



JESUS FISH REDUX

Spray painted red
on buildings marked for post-
Arab Spring cleaning, the letter
Nun looks like a cyclops
smiley face: have a terrifying
day and please don’t let
the door hit you, bye
now. Nasara house tags
morphing into hashtags
of a social solidarity
movement. Echoes
of signs, crossing
millennia.

                                                Perilous token

traced in dirt, passed between
two conscripts joined
by ankle iron in dust and haze
of a traveling Roman circus:
Syrian Christian and converted Jew,
one hundred seventeen years from
when the Christ was hanged.

In those days, faint
little fish bones whispered
a dangerous Name.

Dorsal arc drawn
by gnarled finger
adjacent absent thumb,
tremulous ventral by
palsied hand –

how long, this ancient
line of suffering, silver
fish on pickup bumpers,
stuck there next to a shout:
Migrants Get Out.

David A. Welch is a management consultant with degrees in Journalism and Studies in Literature. His poems have appeared in Dappled Things, E∙ratio, and Otoliths.
 
 
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