The Burning Bush 2, issue five, June 2013
Neil McCarthy Jungle of the Bourgeois Pig for Denisa Pisçu
Your father talked me down from a high window ledge the morning he lit a cigarette in the kitchen, poured me cold coffee, and told me of how alien it felt to have had the freedom to lie in the grass in a park in Vienna. This choice of action is something I’d never thought of, like so many things I have taken for granted to date. I furrowed my brow and jiggled memories in my head looking for a comparison to believe in when I heard you recite to your court at Café Kafka the feeling you had, and the watchful eyes upon you, the first time you tasted a banana. Those of us in attendance smiled as we looked for the comedy in such an odd situation, conned by every thin comparison that sprung to mind. We are watered down by choices, caught pants around our ankles at a crossroads with no signs, everyday staring inanely at giant menu boards and convincing ourselves that an iced lemon mocha with whipped cream and vanilla is just what the doctor ordered. We have no use for effort like we have no use for maps, our geography beamed from satellites to the palms of our hands to whatever jungle we choose. And I am blown away by distance, sitting listening to a man from Moldavia recant for me his translations of Eminescu in a bar in Los Angeles, the clientele shrill as an orchestra tuning up; his index finger pendulating gracefully, assertively, as if a flouted conductor’s baton.
Neil McCarthy is an Irish poet currently living in financial exile in Los Angeles where he teaches English and complains about the heat. In recent years his poems have appeared online and in print in journals such as Magma (UK), Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria), Popshot (UK) and The SHOp (Ireland).
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