Poem by Keith Inman

Birds of Paradise

Maeve pecked at dysentery and cholera
while Netty sang softly to the earthly bodies
and stark moon children
among the dung and grass fires
nested on smoked fields

She didn’t care that Netty called herself nurse
as long as she could do a decent bandage
in shimmering heat as an endless line
shuffled passed the committee of soldiers in ball caps
their curved beaks circling over the dying

A better place Netty overheard
and All the food you can eat
as a laying-on of hands began
and a clutch of children grew larger

The world needs to know mother
Netty chirped as Maeve
her shift feathered red
finished the suture of a women’s stump-leg
in the back of a pick-up truck
~
The reporter behind the sand bagged wall
tapped hawkishly on his notepad
then stared at it with his head cocked
and did another flourish
when he noticed a woman hovering nearby

She stepped closer her hands flapping in front
giving flight to words that fell in tears of dust

After struggling with music, Inman began writing to deal with the rhythms in his head. His teacher eventually suggested poetry to “get that flowery shit” out of his work. An American war resister who had studied at U of T during the tail end of the Frye/McLuhan era, she loved holding class in museums where she’d talk about Impressionism and working-class life in landscape. “You should write like that in your blue collar style,” she said, pointing at peasants gleaning fields in a mountain's shadow. Inman has six books of poetry. His latest are The War Poems: Screaming at Heaven, SEAsia (pronounced Seize-ya) and The Way History Dries, all from Black Moss Press. His books tend to work like novels. His themes link character to landscape.

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