ANOTHER PRIMATE ON EXHIBIT

Stephen De France

Fog bumps over the city’s mottled beach,

it swirls across a car-clogged

Ocean Boulevard & charges

the San Francisco Zoo.

It settles there—its ethereal shrouds

covering the animal exhibits & making mystic

the ubiquitous evergreen trees.

Caged flamingos—legs seemingly too delicate to survive

this world—stand etched on spider web legs,

like plastic sentinels on duty in this churning mist.

Obsidian flamingo eyes—forever unblinking

stare at my back—as a coven of shrieking kids

flush me from this exhibit, moving me

toward a more obscure & dangerous path.

Monkey Island.

Time has changed all.

The Island’s long gone & so too its

rock-to-ground-to-tree inhabitants.

Today it is only a grubby unyielding                   

caged pit with two sinister chimpanzees,

a shambling gray & a one eyed black.

I wonder—were they part of the original

island population? Are they all that is left?

There were hundreds of these island comedians,

but then—there was sun & freedom.

I speculate about these two veterans.

Staring into their pit—their dilemma,

dismal—sitting—waiting for death.

Maybe I should bust them lose?

Set them free again?

I sit quiet—thinking on other kinds of prisons,

prisons we design for ourselves,

8 to 5—cubicled jobs, commuter coffins all in a row.

The chimps eye me—roll back their rubbery lips

and scream as if in fear. . . .

yes, I, too, have grown older.

Have they recognized me? We stare now at

one another, as if looking for new questions.

Having long ago given up on answers.

Given up on most everything,

Given up on hope except to receive

a few random acts of dispassion.

The air temperature dives.

Wind whines & a chill screen

of wet fog pushes across

the wrinkled slate-colored sea,

it rolls toward the ruins of Monkey Island,

rolls toward the ruins of the three of us.

We bind together now, blinded by memories,

dying of time & this enveloping fog.

Past suns & all freedom fades to darkness,

as our overdue souls crash into an indifferent universe.

Reaching for my tail, I curl myself into the fog              

becoming just another primate on exhibit.

Suppression of Savage Customs

Stephen De France

I came back to London, as you know,

full of emptiness to finish Mr. Kurtz’s affairs.

I filed my final report with the Trading Company.

Later that morning, with considerable trepidation,

a few letters, and an odd picture stuffed in my overcoat,

I knocked on the door of Kurtz’s fiancée. I heard her step,

then her dress gliding above Persian carpet.

Upon hearing who I was—she ushered me into a small

parlor where we sat on a walnut settee. The room

was dark, claustrophobic with heavy drapes.

Without preamble she said, “Well?

“What did he say? Did he speak of me?

Did he call out my name?” Her voice

was low and intense. Her cold hands clasped mine.

I mumbled, “Everything that could be done . . .”

Not wanting to disappoint her—truth was here hijacked.

I wallowed in my own dark soul of absolute blackness.

“Yes,” I heard a strained voice say,

the voice was mine, “as he died, he called out your name!”

I cleared my throat.

Silence.

Triumphantly she softly exhaled,

“Yes, I knew it.

In his final moments, I knew it.

He needed me!”

Cupping my grizzled face in her hands,                                                        

She stared into my eyes—I tried to look away

but she held me there with her piercing gaze,

there in growing horror she saw reflected the Congo.

My eyes glowed with cannibal fires, naked black women

in golden hoops and bells, bodies glistening with oil

and the musky smell of the forest.

She began softly weeping. Tears traced her cheeks

leaving fragile lines trailing down her powdered face.

Her whole body trembled and for a moment

we were both captured in a gathering blackness,

at the edges of the primal forests, as the river flowed into

the heart of an immense darkness—into the uttermost ends of the earth.

Steve De France has traveled widely in the United States. On more than one occasion he hitch-hiked across America. He rode rails on freight trains, worked as a laborer on pick up gangs in Arizona, dug swimming pools in Texas, did 33 days in the Pecos city jail as a vagrant, fought bulls in Mexico, and dove for salvage off a small island on the coast of Mazatlan.

After traveling the country in pursuit of adventure, he later worked his way through college driving Yellow Cab and working as a bartender and bouncer. He received a B.A. in Theatre Arts from C.S.U.L.B. He immediately transferred to San Francisco State University. He worked for the San Francisco Shakespeare Company and the Marin Shakespeare Company playing leading and supporting roles. He returned to Los Angeles and finished a Master’s in English Literature. He continued his education at USC and later at Chapman University where he received an MFA in Creative Writing. In 1999 he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award for his writing. He has written & sold scripts for Hollywood & worked as a professional actor in film & television. He continues to write poetry, plays, essays & short stories. He sails a small sailboat in Long Beach, California. His poetry has been published in most of the English-speaking countries of the world. He has won writing awards in England and in the United States.