When will you make mockery of American Man, El Jefe?

Two man-eating, incantatory poems from Nevada-Jane Arlow

Discordia does not, it turns out, hate everything. Every other week, we share a piece of new or gently-used work from an artist who's earned our respect.

There is art that moves us, and there is art that moves with us. This is Fellow Travellers.

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To El Jefe

I write to you from the heated yellow grasses of Ontario and,
while no animal like you has wandered here in several decades
(I have never seen a large cat, but I assure you 
one has definitely seen me), I dream of you walking
through the Black Oak Savannas who will prove us all
to be deathless, like you, creature who kills his prey with a subtle
tooth through the skull, No-King of the Sonoran, I wish you were here
by Bloor street, terrorizing the dogs and that schmuck who I spit at
for manhandling his girlfriend. 

After Midsummer I leave my window wide open, in the night
I hear the sounds of beasts warring and being warred upon. 
(Someone won’t stop harassing the skunk out back.)
I want you, I want you to climb through my nocturne’s window
and I’ll hide you underneath my fuzzy blanket (the nice one).

I have heard that in your years you are an Old Man
but you will always be virile to me
your spots enrapture me in my daydreams
in the heated yellow grasses
and I feel that bleating roar of yours in the core of my trachea
I want your rosettes on my skin.

When will you make mockery of American Man, El Jefe?
Plow your wall through the Republic’s walls, El Jefe,
take Arizona, its yours, set us all free
sink those teeth into ICE-bathed skulls.

El Jefe, the CN Tower is on fire
and I will see you in an hour at the limits of the city.

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Hōrārum Domini: Invocation

muggy dank air leaks through all the windows and walls
with my bare breasts I am marked mammalian
I look out my east window and await my lover who comes in from the west by train
I have a cock and my aforementioned tits so
there is a march today in my honour  
the sea is far but I can smell it
the sea is far but I can see it
the sea is far but it sits between my ears 
large black and white dolphins from the kingdom of the dead
break the water’s glass and sing 
further out to the east, by the great rock, near the graves of the last neanderthals
and where Nelson’s arm sank 
White Gladis and her ilk traverse the Pillars of Hercules in war 
dragging party boats into the dead man's stream,
The Atlantic, a paltry rag, owned by a coltan money widow
says that they are not my friends 
and while I wince at times at the old proviso 
“the enemy of my enemy is my friend”
White Gladis is my bosom comrade 
and whether or not I am hers is up to Gladis 
I may be a ten-fingered fuck, O companion
and I, in theory, could pilot a boat
but I hope you find my face in yours 
as I toast to your victory and to your health
across the wine-dark sea

“To El Jefe” originally appeared (in somewhat modified form) in Acta Victoriana 147.2 (Spring 2023).

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NEVADA-JANE ARLOW got his name from a series of dreams about the Mojave desert. He received what he believes to be an equivalent to an MFA in creative writing while panhandling in Toronto, where he still remains and will remain until long after the city is taken by the lake.

Interested in being a Fellow Traveller? Email your poetry, prose, visual art, etc. to discordia.sucks@gmail.com. We pay (not much), and pieces are collected a few times a year in a small print edition.

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