Walker Zupp is a Bermudian writer and poet. He has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. His first novel, Martha, was published by Montag Press in 2020. His second novel, Nakadai, is will be published by Montag Press in 2022. He lives in Cornwall with a fine artist.
Poems by W. Zupp have been previously featured on In Parentheses.
Mother and Daughter
A crack in the paint shows the old red paint,
Or maybe the chairs were always dull grey.
The train moves monotonously past faint
Alibis of neighborhoods in dismay,
From which these two might have been transmitted.
They sit across from one another, dead
Lively phones vexing the off-white table.
“We don’t often get to chat,” notes a thread
Of a mother—her daughter like cable
From which current has been disconnected.
I watched them at intervals, ignoring.
They didn’t chat, or anything like that.
I half-expected them to be snoring.
But what I saw was a dead habitat,
Where two people had been self-rejected.
The existence of love is not at stake:
A mother can’t help but love her child.
The form of love is sometimes a mistake,
Like thinking weather’s wrong when it’s mild,
Or children safe when they’re all dejected.
We always want the wrong things for offspring.
We must seem daft to them, our treasuries
Bereft of common sense, and ice melting
In global corners caught by memories
Of making women laugh and men connected.
The Local Looney
I’ve made an enemy of the local looney.
You’re not supposed to call them loonies now, are you?
I suppose he moved me,
Except that’s hardly new.
Our sense of aesthetic is pathetic
When the local Nazi’s sympathetic.
When you think about all the art that made virtue
Riveting you’ve got to curse the current rhythm.
Where’s the proper church who
Showed principle’s not grim?
But that question’s bound to beckon outrage,
And that’s supposed to be our golden age.
When did knowing what to say become an ashtray?
Hushing up when a man says he fucked your wife sucks.
We don’t think silence flays
The backs of gentile cucks.
We love pretending sick people aren’t real,
By doing that we praise what we conceal.
The Vicious Intellect
I watch free porn and drink instant coffee.
I know I’m wrong. Using blockers and milk
I dull the vices inexorably.
But everything’s dulling, pillows and silk
For the mind, these days. The body lags back,
Immune to the fact the web’s worse than crack.
I used to drink, mostly: nothing prepared
Me for naked screens, ear-bud-blocked parents
Or living-dead phones with eyes and larynx.
The worse thing is how everyone is scared.
The kids won’t admit this; nor their fuckers:
The blind-deaf roots who work forty hours.
For them hard happiness is for suckers
Who stay off smartphones and whiskey-sours.
Maybe life is dull because we have all
God ever wanted: hospitals and halls
Packed with mirrors reflecting ourselves,
And things and people indivisible.
Our souls have become invisible,
We’re afraid of children, and things on shelves.
Ten years ago we had “jobs”; now “careers”
Stalk abbey and academy alike.
I wish I could see someone cry, and tears,
But dulling’s done away with mankind’s spikes.
I have a headache all the bloody time:
For the mind something sailor’s cured with lime.
What’s sad is how the muttering matters,
The oven-ready resentments are real
Because we’ve all forgotten how to feel.
We want the chains of Adam to shatter.
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32 pages, published 1/15/2022
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