Master Debaters

This entry is part 50 of 51 in the series Une Semaine de Bonté

down the drain says the shapeshifter
you can hear the call of the wild
life in the sewers and boardrooms

but the witch doctor is no octopus
his head cannot thread a needle
his craft is no match for running water

down the drain or into the gutter
with your mutter of all bums
says the shapeshifter’s body language

her people knead her
to be better bread
rising like a mushroom cloud

while the witch doctor’s salt
returns to the dead sea
fed by a river neither deep nor wide

About

Via Negativa is a unique experiment in daily, poetic conversation with the living and the dead. Dave Bonta founded the site in 2003 and Luisa A. Igloria joined in 2010. Guest authors contribute as well. Dave writes daily erasure poems to discover the poetry hidden in the Diary of Samuel Pepys. Luisa has been writing and posting a poem a day since November 2010, often in response to Dave’s entries at The Morning Porch. Collections of poems first published at Via Negativa include Luisa’s The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis and Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser, and Dave’s Ice Mountain and Breakdown: Banjo Poems. Read more…