Bannerman's Castle
by James Callan
Coyotes chant on Storm King Mountain pawing their names in the ash seeping cold-pressed jazz through sea-slug lips weeping raw-throated dirges, alas. A whole new world over hickory and oak Princess Jasmine drowning in the Hudson. Captain Christopher Jones plucked the petals of the Mayflower dashing their blooms against Plymouth Rock. Lake Tear of the Clouds a shallow tarn Peter Dinklage could stand in and breathe squeaking ballads from the North sung by cosplaying pirates paper mache parrots dreaming of the sea. Pinnipeds on Pollepel Island staking claim to Bannerman’s Castle Babyfaced buccaneers cleaning out the chandlery marauding munitions and clubbing the pups. Mermaids with fishfingers to net any yachtsman be he staunch as a rock or feeble as shit. Hark! Can you hear it? The moaning sirens Lord! They are as loud as a six-inch gun. Look at these fucks basking like crabs so-called artists graffiti on Scottish baronial architecture. Leviathans with lidless eyes Atlantic sturgeon and bass scoffing at silver hooks and lures, wondering where the hell is the bait? Apes emerge from brownstone huts descending from steel trees bad beards and big bellies saddled on wheeled steeds “getting sun” or “getting air” as if one can take these things and seize them for oneself.
James Callan lives and writes in Aotearoa (New Zealand). His fiction has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, X-R-A-Y, Hobart, Reckon Review, and elsewhere. His 2nd collection, Fish Out of Water, is forthcoming from Anxiety Press.
