Mike Hoy
Long Tailed Boat To Benai, Maybe ?
Wedged into the narrow prow,
I’m plowing beside a saffron monk
into a travelogue with no voice over.
A half dressed girl is bathing,
another beating clothes, a couple steer
tarred cargo barges. Fragile walkways
tiptoe into the forest. Behind a thin
confusion of half floating houses
the jungle waits.
We’re cruising for custom
like a floating brothel.
The postman paddles by, grins,
waves at the dunderheaded
farang punter. Old ladies
on jetties stretch long brown legs.
Two women in topees paste posters
on sunken poles. Suspended from cages
birds sing to fat babies cradled
over the water. Boy shampoos his hair,
man washes his white poodle. Blue bird,
an Asian kingfisher, snatches
sliver of silver from the river.
A woman steps from her door
into a flat canoe. Another,
wearing stovepipe hat, delivers
her husband: we must be the local bus.
Shanty Town Stop, a backdrop for a Wat
like some golden God on a green island.
A klan of white robed monks, extra saintly
maybe? I see swelling of holy breasts.
A plane whispers into heaven carrying
travellers who think they know a thing
or two about where they’re going.
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The