cargo of sandalwood at the Fiji Islands

and at Guam a quantity of beech de mer, betel nuts, and deer horns; ivory rings for martingales; a cargo of copper ore, shipped in Chile; sperm and whale oil, sperm candles and whalebone; pigs of copper; six seroons of indigo; pigs of lead, moys of salt, and frails of raisins; seal skins, prime fur and pup skins, from seals taken at the Falkland Islands; a cargo of tea, fresh, prime, and of the finest chop, quarter chests of tea, hyson skin and congo, with the present of a shawl from the hong merchant in Canton; cases, trunks, bales, casks, kegs and bundles

Charles Reznikoff, "Rivers and Seas, Harbours and Ports"

Raucous on carless early mornings

Nae knickers, all fur coat
Slurped Valvona and Crolla,
Tweed-lapelled, elbow-patched, tartan-skirted,
Kilted, Higgs-bosoned, tramless, trammelled and trammed,
Awash with drowned witches prematurely damned,
Prim as skimmed milk, cheesily floodlit, breezily,
Galefully, Baltically cold with royal
Lashings of tat and Hey-Jimmy wigs, high on swigs
Of spinsterish, unmarried malt;
City of singletons, salt
Of the tilled earth, castled, unqueened, unkinged
Capital of no one knows what yet, bankers’
Losses mounting your besieged
Acropolises, the Waverley snow
Spattering on Sir Walter’s deerhound, agley
This way and that, on the black cat
Crossing the kirkyard, the cartoon lassie
With the silver tassie, the boy
With a toy gun gunning for Covenanters,
The carlin ranting by the Water of Leith, the filed, billable teeth
Of lawyers, not proven under a barefaced cheek
Of chloroform, high-tea sunsets, Jennerdoms of discreetest passion,
Lace curtains drawn over mooning cannonballs, randy as the barrel of Mons Meg,
All brass bells unpolished, Magdalenism, Darwinian butchery,
Knox-talk, broderie, Brodies, bestial vennels,
Drug deals done under far too many bridges,
Midges, lost Provosts, the whole Botanic jing-bang,
Rhododendrons and ducks, fresh pasta and spliced Paolozzis,
Ramparts, rampant kirks, laddies’ and ladies’ hat-works,
David Humery, domes with hearty, clarty splashings,
The crowned spire, the dungeons, the crags, the old lags, the seagulls
Raucous on carless early mornings, the Firth of Forth perjink past crowsteps
Of informatics, draughty parallelograms, pandas and heritage pubs,
Cannons pointing rudely down the Canongate, the New Town’s trig
Windowboxes geraniumed for suffragettes’ parades,
The Bioquarter, the Quartermile, the hanged, drawn, and quartered,
Halls, gardens, harpsichords, waterfalls, jiggings and jeggings,
Festivals, Days Estival with lawyers’ clerks, and couthy, uncouth doctors,
Surgeons’ Hall surgeons, the burked dead, the Fringe, the redheads,
Hoaxed hexes, Samhain dreamers, schemies,
Anaemic academics, to-die-for grass, strollers, statuesque stalkers
Capering on parade with fire-eaters, unicyclists, caber-tossers, pipes and drums
Youtubed ad infinitum, the heady, reikie breath, and the rush of breathless newbies
Just off the train and already never leaving.

Robert Crawford, "Camera Obscura"

ocean blushes the blues

Yesterday called to say we were together and you were bloodshot and again the day carried you across a field of hours, deep into dawn, back to now, where you are thankful for

what faces you,t he storm, this day's sigh as the day shifts its leaves, the wind, a prompt against the calm you can't digest.

Blue ceiling calling a body into the midst of azure, oceanic, as ocean blushes the blues it can't absorb, reflecting back a day

the day frays, night, not night, this fright that passes through the eye crashing into you, is this you?

Yes, it's me, clear the way, then hold me clear of this that faces, the storm carrying me through dawn

not knowing whether to climb down or up into its eye - day, hearing a breath shiver, whose are you>

Guard rail, spotlight, safety lock, airbag, firelane, slip guard, night watch, far into this day are the days this day was meant to take out of its way. An obstacle

to surrender, dusk in dawn, held open, then closing,

then opening, a red-tailed hawk, dusk at dawn, taking over blue, surveying movement, against the calm, red sky at morning,

whose are you?

Claudia Rankine, from 'V', Citizen