Somewhere else
He woke up
and decided to disguise himself as a chicken,
then he walked out the front door
into the main street. He walked past
the pizza place, the bank, the café
and laundromat,
all the way down
to the supermarket.
The people stared – some smiled,
some sniggered, while others burst out laughing.
They knew he wasn’t a real chicken
and that this wasn’t Portugal, Spain
or Mexico, where they imagined
chickens were allowed to roam the streets freely.
They knew this had to be somewhere else.
Time Flies
I had tried to find time, but it was out of stock.
I searched every toy shop in every mall in the city, but everywhere it was the same.
I had been hoping to buy it for you.
Sometimes
Sometimes
we throw sand from the windows
Sometimes we set cars on fire
Sometimes
we sleep naked under purple covers
draw strange women dancing in dilapidated factories
play drums in woods
paint monster masks
Sometimes
we stand alone in yellow fields
listen to jazz from 1920s lips
carry broken toys on our backs
muddy the waters
paint buttocks red
Sometimes we dream true
Desire
I walked into a dream and saw you.
The dream lasted eleven months.
Blue silence
As a child
you used to
talk to trees
you used to even
talk to hung-up clothes,
such as a dress or
a three-piece suit.
These days
you scream
into the blue silence.
Gary Cummiskey is a poet and publisher living in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is the founder of Dye Hard Press, which he started in 1994. He is the author of several poetry chapbooks. His selected poems, Outside the cave, was published in 2021.
In 2009, with Eva Kowalska, he compiled Who was Sinclair Beiles?, a collection of writings about the South African Beat poet. An expanded edition was published in 2016.
His short story collection, Off-ramp, was short-listed for the 2014 Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award.
His work has been published in the UK, US, France, Denmark, Sweden, India, Egypt, and Greece.
SULFUR 