Apocalyptic Phone Call, 2002
On the phone, you told me you’d found Jesus,
that you never really lost him, just strayed,
made your way back,
and I should read my gospels,
all of them, Old Testament
and New, familiarize myself
with Daniel-you knew now
you named your son
after him.
You said you’d seen signs on the news,
the earthquake in Istanbul,
how the fault line in Turkey
originated in Jerusalem, where a mosque
stands heretically over the stone
of Abraham, and in Cape Town
some high force winds passed through.
No one had been expecting them.
The sound of running horses.
I asked, Was it a sirocco?
and you replied, Did you hear about this?
Before I could mention Grade 8 Geography,
you continued on to say the winds
had a Muslim place of origin, that
Jesus had talked about the Anti-Christ,
signs of his presence, how
you now believe this to be Mohammed,
and that all those following him
are being led away from God.
Jesus says it, you said, and Daniel.
It all matches up.
Distraught you couldn’t convince me, I tried
to ease your panic. Don’t worry, I said.
If Jesus does show himself
at the end, I’ll tell him
my sister was right all along.
I didn’t hear your reply.
Dolphins Don’t Blow Each Other Up
Front page article:
a South African scientist’s claim
that despite the large size
of their brains
underwater mammals
are not very smart.
He berates them for accepting
man-made borders, waxes on
about the greater number of ganglia
lesser of neurons
being more a sign of their capacity
for bearing ocean temperatures
than one of intelligence.
But do dolphins bicker
in front of offspring
or, at a party with friends,
find any opportunity
to cut each other
down
to
size?
Do they start wars
on pretence
alone?
Humans, hungry,
might jump through hoops for food.
I would do it for sex
or a day at the spa. And who is he, this
privileged scientist, that is above escaping
the narrow confines
of his own supposition.
© Julie Mahfood
Julie Mahfood lives near Montreal where she hosts WIRE, a quarterly reading series for Montreal’s West Island writers. She has been shortlisted in THIS Magazine’s 2008 Great Canadian Literary Hunt; her work has appeared in the Literary Review of Canada, The Antigonish Review, and others and as well on the CD DuBref Session 1: Spoken word anthology.
