Port Arthur, 1904

by Jesse S. Mitchell


The monstrous hieroglyphs tell the tale, I am still alive.  Too little revolution, nineteen hundred zero and five.  Won’t even know the way back home until the end.  The merchant marine sang in demotic French, J’adore, J’adore, Je l’aime, Je ne peux pas prendre beaucoup plus de ceci, as we chugged around the bend.

Between us, stands a pot bellied beast
 Ten thousand feet tall.
Just stroke your hair; comb your fingers through,
But never look him in the eye, you’ll fall under his thrall.
Goddamn, I am so anemic
Miracle I’m alive,
I have hardly any blood at all.
This is just desperation, the sound of it.

In the future of all this, the jukebox has all the be-bop cats eating out of the palm of its hand but that was Gapon’s plan all along, great big patriotic song as we hit the street so sweet. No Tsar, No Tsar, then we have no Tsar.  Pictographs and maps, police unions and bloody city centre square. It makes me worry to prophesize such a scary story, to paraphrase.

The wall between us is so very very tall,
Can’t see around it at all,
Scan the crowds as they protest the war,
The power of 1917 compels me…
Compels me.
Goddamn, I am so anemic
Miracle I’m alive,
I have hardly any blood at all.