Flow, Laura Niagara

"when I was a Freeport,
and you were the Main Drag..."

"I've got a lot of patience, baby
That's a lot of patience to lose..."

"affectionate
machine-tickling aphid" Darwin

globalisation's
over-crayoned blue sky flakes

but the duck's left blank,
like Depot Harbour

getting rubbed off
the grid was no biblical

judgement, dig--
it looked like a nice place!

but Carthage NOW
looks better than this place

fifty years on--
alder-poked, broom-worried,

a ghost town
after the ghost had gone--

a desertedness
out of large-print SF--

writhing and plinking
in the furzy foundation

the dreaded
"Ukelele Konig"

laced its tongue
through a web

of taut nylon but
we couldn't make it out

or if it was even
talking at all--

auctioned off
from under your feet

like the family
Astrakhan, and if

a trestle is the only
thing holding it back

then admit the jungle
the empire of the ants

could we not just
get it over with?

Or must we choke forever
on periphery's piney sap?