(He's a drifter, always floating around her, has nowhere else to go. He wishes she would sing, not much, just the scales; or take some notice, give him the fish eye.) (Bounded by round walls she makes fish eyes and kissy lips at him, darts behind pebbles, swallows his charms hook, line and sinker) (He's bowled over. He would take her to the ocean, they could count the waves. There, in the submarine silence, they would share their deepest secrets. Dive for pearls like stars.) (But her love's since gone belly-up. His heart sinks like a fish. He drinks like a stone. Drowns those sorrows, stares emptily through glass.) (the reason, she said she wanted) (and he could not give) a life beyond the (bowl) QLRS Vol. 2 No. 2 Jan 2003
After discovering the Internet, my mother has trouble finding a connection, and calls me up for help while I am at work. We keep miscommunicating. She has clicked open so many windows the computer threatens to hang. And my logic runs out of variations to explain the same thing over and over. Suddenly, I imagine she is looking for her future through that glowing screen and I am really helping her to find back her life after all her children have left for new homes, new families to love. ‘What now?’ she asks. ‘Try again,’ I reply, the phone pressed to my ear. ‘Close all the windows. Tell me — what do you see?’ Commentary: It might be useful to teach students the etymology of words, and how the meaning of certain words alters with the culture and time. Technological change, in particular, has brought about linguistic and cultural changes. Words such as ‘windows’, ‘connection’ and ‘logic’ have been prescribed new meanings...
*P.S. This anti-apartheid poem by Andre Letoit, written under the pseudonym Koos Kombuis, stumped students at a Cambridge examination. The poem comprises only punctuation marks. I added this poem into the list because I think it is an interesting way of highlighting the silences of the Other (which is what the poem is about), and also to draw attention to grammar and punctuation. There is also a lot of room for interpretation.
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