STICKPINS ON MY GLOBE
A dozen women wearing burkas,
Drinking tea and eating strawberries
In a boutique hotel near Hyde Park,
Ownership proclaimed in Arabic script
On a brass plaque by the door.
Their gossip is subdued.
The floor space of the convention center
Is measured in acres, lined throughout
By escalators and moving walkways,
Uniformed staff smile and point the way.
If this Atlanta is the New South,
I prefer The French Quarter in New Orleans.
A liveried doorman assaults
A deliveryman for using the ‘N’ word
In front of a huge Houston hotel.
His hands are fast and hard
And the driver goes down hard and fast
And stays down, twitching.
Iguanas, torso-tied to tripods
For sale roadside near Mazatlan.
The ribbon of road runs between
A soft-surfed beach and a jungle wall.
A five-peso minibus stops wherever
To take anyone to town.
Safari memories fade to the sound
Of car alarms wailing round the clock.
The unsafe Capetown streets are patrolled
By white men in white cars.
The Bell Captain orders the good taxis.
Everything here is tribal.
The SkyTrain view is a blurred Bangkok
Of polluted canals and derelict buildings.
The outside air is chewably humid,
The sky above a thickening, sickening grey.
I stand head and shoulders above
Everyone else in the coach.
Endless blue sea and cloudless sky
But we’re cruising mostly by dark of night
To identical ports of call,
Tourist-trapped on board for a week.
Fat kids fill the pool and line the buffet.
Hard core gamblers only come out at night.
A pair of bulb-nosed, hump-backed moose
Watch passersby from a downtown park.
They followed the cleared train tracks
Into Anchorage through record snowfall
Measured in double digit feet.
They seem unperturbed but hungry.
Sensory overload in the Tenderloin,
With Deep Throat and The Exorcist playing,
While Carol Doda’s 44s enhance The Condor Club
With its two-drink minimum.
There is a live tiger in a red Cadillac
on a parade-lined Chinatown street.
This beach would be an easy life
With free fish in the sea, free fruit in the trees,
Warm sand under my back.
Even the bus driver sells ganja.
I want to grow dreads and wear a knit cap
And live in St. Lucia forever.
Our guns are stuck in Customs
In the bowels of the Frankfurt Airport.
Lines are three-wide and auditoriums long.
The mile-high ceiling is hidden
By the smoke of a thousand cigarettes
Impatiently puffed by those waiting.
Packed like tinned fish on the ferry
From Hong Kong to Kowloon.
Bespoke tailors on every streetcorner,
Backstreet warehouses stacked with jade and cloisonne.
My western feet hang over the end
Of my too short hotel room bed.
Spotlighting; roos and rabbits
From the back of a flatbed farm truck,
Bumping across a vast paddock
Where sheep find the gathering of grass
To be far more competitive
Than their Aussie owners will tolerate.
Trying to use my rusty French
In a Quebec City hotel restaurant,
I am language-shamed by a waiter.
With little interest in national unity,
The cabbies are madmen,
Careening through meaningless street signs.
In a cliffside, four-level house
Overlooking the Oslo fjord,
Brandy and cigars are served
In the billiards room,
To be enjoyed outside by the pool.
The shipping business is very good.
Stiff-necked from gawking at skyscrapers,
Lurching through downtown Manhattan
In a taxi with a horn but no brakes,
Wondering where we’ll go for lunch.
Whether I’ll get to see the Empire State Building,
Wondering why I came here at all.
Broodmares and foals gathered
From rocky badlands pastures,
Thundering down a draw
Into Goldsberry’s homeplace corrals.
400 head in a rolling cloud of thunder,
More than I’ll ever see all at once again.
Himba tribesmen walk in from the scrublands
To a small town in newly-independent Namibia,
Striding like tall kings in animal skin capes,
Carrying long, fearsome spears.
They refuse to look at us
and we do not wonder why.
Gregg Norman lives and writes in a lakeside cottage in Manitoba, Canada, with his wife and a small dog who runs the joint. His poetry has been placed in journals and literary magazines in Canada, USA, UK, Australia, Europe, and India. He was recently nominated for a 2024 Best of the Net award.
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