Bonnie Bishop has lived in Italy and Greece and hitchhiked from Athens to Copenhagen. She has crossed Canada by train, marvelled at the terra cotta warriors in Xi’an, ridden an elephant in the jungle of Nepal and gazed at the Taj Mahal as the sun set and the full moon rose. Read her book, O Crocodile, (2013, Finishing Line Press).
All work
Obedient, I offer to roll down the ramp of the citadel, /
juggle oranges, smear my face with figs /
and stare at the sun through a glass of honey. …
The sacred river is reduced to a trickle; /
its banks are littered with plastic bags. /
Behind the temple wall, drone of chanting. …
One day in this dry heat and we’re already /
light-headed, what with the gigantic cleft /
in the mountainside …
I could easily have mistaken them for boulders but they are moving, slowly, steadily moving. Through binoculars, I see their horns and huge rectangular heads, their grinding jaws.
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Three thousand ancestors ask how I straddle / the sea, a foot on either shore. //
Read more Poetry or Postcard Prose