This is where I read the daily news,
over coffee. I don’t use a tablet.
I caress paper, trace the folds, the fiber,
compelled to feel the aches of trees
under my fingers. I need the thud of timber
felled, cleaved in elephantine woods.
Here I suck the ink of oceanic squids
served as Arial Black, so I may comprehend
a speck of Mandela’s atomic sacrifice
for this distant suburb of New York,
this nation of the connected world,
that Madiba’s crew sailed bravely
on the moored ship of Robben Island,
its footing in storms of freezing waters,
dark stones always facing toward sun
leaving no shadows take root on any side
of any surface, any clock, any rock.
This is where I read, have coffee.
embrace the pains of my neighborhood
as it contorts, and turns, and twists
to reach the purlieus of the world,
that tumble around like Amazonian forests
and swell like seven seas of suicide.

Perry Bellos studied at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He currently lives in Cape Town, South Africa. He writes poetry and experimental fiction. He is working on a creative non-fiction book about the future of monetized societies in the West.