Markers Sartorial

Recently, Clint Burnham has provided us with an image of Turban Turbulence in these lines from Buddyland

a hardhat over a turban
isn't anywhere so funny
as a sheet over a suit

The lines came back to mind when I came across these from "Ghazal for Hell's Morning" collected in Rob Winger's The Chimney Stone: Ghazals

Under the hijab you find follicles, not fuses.
Poison on the neighbour's lawn. The water table, spent.

After that second line, I am left pondering fertilizer bombs, drained aquifers and suburban xeriscaping. I know this is in a manner treating the ghazal couplet as a puzzle. It must be my training from reading Phyllis Webb's anti-ghazals (collected in Water and Light) where I find this concluding couplet

with poems From the Country of Eight Islands. Hokku
Haiku. Chōka, Kanshi. Kouta. Tanka. Renga. Seeds.

Clever archipelago made up of the title of a book and a set of song and poem forms. And the status of Seeds is ambiguous: another title? or simply a comment on the types of "islands" that precede? or itself an island? How far we travel in such a small space... and borrowed disguises.

And so for day 900
31.05.2009