The Illustrated Man Person by Mark Young

& considered. Where to start.

Where to end. What to be. Call

me Queequeg? Start at the fore-

head? Fill it in or put a title there,

the chapter heading? The chin?

Remembered Ta moko, had seen

the death of it when young,

old ladies sitting on the kerb

waiting for the bus to Waitara's

Manukorihi Pā, green markings

moving with their mouths. Had left

the country before its resurrection,

part of the twin-tongue reformation.

Using the chin would give that aspect

strength, but continuity lost in the

hidden contours of the throat. The

neck? Too many prison tats, tearing

along the dotted line. The chest? But

only if a play, the curtains opening.

But only if the final scene, or curtain

call, everyone on stage. & how to lay

it out? As newspaper, columnar, or

else a book, straight-down, verso,

recto, the arms appendices or table of

contents & an index. Dead Egyptian,

ungrateful, right round & keep on

keeping down, or variant helix, single.

Or doubled, entwined, defining who

you are. Or who might like to be. Ideal

is Möbius Strip. Reading the message

within the eyes each other time you

pass. Alternate. Reading without them.

*****

Mark Young lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia, & has been publishing poetry for almost sixty years. His most recent books are Ley Lines, from gradient books of Finland, The Chorus of the Sphinxes, from Moria Books in Chicago, & some more strange meteorites, from Meritage & i.e. Press, California / New York. 

He also has two chapbooks in the Moria Books Locofo Chaps political poetry series — "100 chaps in the first 100 days of the Trump presidency."