Each year another tribe
is assimilated into the dominant genome,
where once there were thousands, millions,
now there are only a handful; and languages
once spoken, are no longer heard
even in memory. There had been
three hundred species of potato,
now only five are bred and sold—
all in the name of efficiency,
underpinned by planned economies of scale.
Soon there will be merely one singularity,
ripely thriving in its similarity,
and history is twisted
into little more than a bent afterthought.
Those molecules of sense and suggestion,
known by some as a residue of the dead,
may arise as the tincture loses its light
at the end of the curve; not a dark matter
but a matter of serious repose:
an inevitable consequence of the microcosm
where apparently all semblance
of modern mathematics
looses rational bearing
and the bear comes out of hibernation.
Well, they were just hanging there.
What else would you expect me to do?
especially when I'd known he'd worn them,
even more so when a breeze caught that lace edging
and it fluttered ever so lightly, and that image
came to mind—something I had seen
in an Attenborough documentary for the BBC.
It was some kind of weird-looking squid-creature
pulsing his tailwing against the black night of deep sea,
and he stared through the camera
right at me with his one single eye
and I swear he had a dirty look on his face
just like an Amsterdam-window-front-lady
enticing me into her plush boudoir.
Anyway, there they were, frilly and lacy and red,
and just caught with a dappling of breeze
so I slipped over the fence—there was no one at home—
stripped down to my buff and slipped them on.
O how they felt on my bare behind,
like angels caressing my cheeks
like heaven cupping my balls,
But just knowing I wore his underpants,
his frilly, red underpants, and knowing that somewhere
from far up on a rooftop, someone,
perhaps one his own bodyguards
was watching me through a pair of binoculars
made my spine tingle and my skin goosebump.
Marc Vincenz was born in Hong Kong to Swiss-British parents. His poems and translations have appeared extensively online and in print, including Washington Square Review, The Bitter Oleander, Canary and Poetry Salzburg Review. Secret Letter, his translation of Swiss poet Erika Burkart's poetry collection Geheimbrief, is forthcoming from Červená Barva Press in 2013. An English-German bi-lingual collection of his poems Additional Breathing Exercises / Zusätzliche Atemübungen is to be released by Wolfbach, Zurich (2013) and a collection, Mao's Moles, is to be released by NeoPoiesis Press in 2013. Marc is Editor-in-Chief of MadHat Press and Mad Hatters' Review, and divides his time between Reykjavik, Zurich, Berlin and New York City.
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