from “Cairo Compression”*
Jude Cowan Montague
*Two of four poems responding to the photography of Jason Larkin. This work was set by Steve Layton and recorded for “The News Agents” on Resonance FM. EP available from netlabel Linear Obsessional.
Trails of Gold
I was scuffling in white dust
under pylons
when my city sprang into the near distance.
Whoooeee
Sun on my face,
peeling my orange,
I’m shining,
standing on a billion bunkers.
I am shaking the river,
tyre-rolling, earth-munching,
lugging the largest bag I can find.
I chill,
where the subcutaneous dump
has been scooped
— wouldn’t ice-cream be nice for a change? —
by a voracious digger.
I am sheltering under a plastic sheet
poked up on sticks
in the grass-fringe
in-between
tall, feather bird heads
commodity watching.
Have you spied the skyline
from the exposed side
of a reef burning in the afternoon?
It hums electricity,
streams electrons.
Our powerpumps, they’re thirsty.
Kids who swing on a wire fence
or cup dust buildings
fingers rubbing sunklines,
playing at gods playing with people on the tarmac
in the empty road —
you can always play —
I say — at living.
Fragile lakes evaporate
leaving rust puddles;
dishes have been discovering
no metal
worth a good sieving.
Tired, mudspotted
seekers turn up late,
packs of thin, bare dogs
drawn nosedown through outblown rockpit.
Those skinny bastards
won’t stop till they hit meat.
cairo sandwich
he dug his heels in and grabbed nonexistence
when stiletto sank into the desert
he tensed back the pin
of metal to try to pierce the sky
and shouted
we are forgotten like our forefathers and mothers
but my children are opportunists
and lay rows of red bricks
grid marking the waves of dunes
watch out for the king’s propaganda.
he has seduced men to drive into
the stove on a mission
to find brands and ghetto-blasters
six-packs pecs and perfume
the messily dug sand-earth casts a shady respite
for any creatures quick enough to scuttle into its shadows
stuck in this unmanaged muck
elegant geometric struts
section sky into triangles
beyond 1 2 maybe 100 dunes
the green grass cloth of a golf course
keeps down the gook
bunkers are too easy here
some houses collapse
before they are made
slip into ecru grit
wooden girders that shuttered
concrete in place tip
and land in bonfire style piles
they are the grand children of the ship
builders’ planks afloat down the Nile
blown down the sand river
we love to move but we hate wind
for the sand becomes an aeroplane
gathers its body
and arabesques into djinn
who’ll smash in our faces
their collective magic
we keep low
walls be our protectors
walls define our manners
keep us safe
this is your wheelbarrow and it is your job
to shift these concrete blocks
and pile them around my empire's edge
we have to erect beauty in gold and white
to show the world that we are not a land of peasants
egypt smells oily
as america of the 1920s
suckled on gilded urbanism
we spit it out to pull
its sticky strands into
liquid city, rock-rolling,
our destination pours a heavenly colour
billboards
we must have more of these
for they are both
picture and wall
they will stop the sand
stop the sand
it is not our friend
we must manage its horror
it will overwhelm us poor people
egyptian will vanquish sand
egypt won’t vanish under sand
understand
ladders stilts
rise high above the monotonous plain
speaking a word I heard in a dream
REEM
Jude Cowan Montague is an artist, writer and composer with a multi-media practice that crosses disciplines. She is active in new printmaking, installation, poetry, prose fiction, film history, vocal work and performance. She is known for her innovative work with international news agency output. This practice developed while working as an archivist for the Reuters Television Archive. Her first collection For the Messengers (Donut Press, 2011) re-formed edits from the Reuters output during 2008 as individual poems. Her album The Leidenfrost Effect (Folkwit Records, 2015) was co-composed with Dutch producer Wim Oudijk and reimagines quirky stories from the Reuters Life! feed. She is a broadcaster and curates and hosts The News Agents a weekly hybrid news-arts show on Resonance 104.4 FM. https://linearobsessional.bandcamp.com/album/cairo-compression https://www.judecowanmontague.com
