KM4
5 Time to Forget
There’s a camel a goat a sandal left in red sand.
Over there’s a water tower, under that’s the bore hole
and here the body asks and asks about the role
it’s asked to play: no matter how it’s dressed.
Like a nomad like a journalist like the hyena
who eats even the bones
and shits bone-white scat from the calcium.
No matter if it sleeps under a dome
of UNHCR plastic, baby blue in the sun,
or hides in a spider hole
or walks around in uniform behind plate glass,
the body makes itself known before it becomes unknown.
On the television the blade runner is facing down the skin-job,
and of the two, who is the more human?
On the table there isn’t a glass of whiskey but the ghost of whiskey
that keeps whispering, It’s OK to be this way, nobody will know.
And then the boy who rolls his pant legs
up above his ankles because to let them drag along the ground
is to be unclean turns right before your eyes into a skeleton.
Contributor’s notes: Tom Sleigh
Contributor’s notes: Michael Hafftka
KM4 Introduction: Poem & Paintings
Artist’s Statement: Michael Hafftka
KM4