<prev> <next> <contents> Page 3
| One Absent Boat No one notices one boat's absence the rivermaster is busy dying anyway the docks are as always, the warehouses as always and the helligan boatmen in their hooting and spitting unflappable and fewer each morning What day is this? What river is this? The surviving captains tie the Blood Bight Hitch consult cloud charts, starfish entrails to track it, the predator scything through the jungle: Four more to die by dusk three through the night Here and there along the epidemic alleyways encroaching with lianas the fevered faces mouth wordless as fish suffocating in a basket up to an indifferent sky so many leaving, none alive save Nazirah and Ekimi no one notices one absent boat
|
The Congo Perhaps Nazirah on the prow in bloodblack vestments she's on point with the rifle for soldiers and bandits Ekimi's hands gamble in the wheelhouse dodging submerged wrecks and the banks that conceal catastrophe beneath bowing ferny skirts Behind a bend gutted Kikwit vanishes a wide safe stretch unfurls before the boat Kwamouth days ahead, then Kinshasa then perhaps anywhere For the first time in weeks could be lifetimes they unclench storklike shoulders and eyes raggedly starve into each other |
|
|