John Barnie is from Abergavenny, on the south-east border of Wales, and has authored twelve collections of poetry, fiction and essays. He edits the Welsh cultural magazine Planet. Depression Overlooking the Bay Nobody talks to the fat man n- ow/he's on a cliff/he's disconsola- te/might as well count the fluf- f in his pockets/ooo fat man it'- s a long way down to the rock tha- t looks to be floating in the quea- sy sea where a seal stares u- p with labrador eyes the retrie- ving water-dog whose supper is fi- sh/hmmm whiskers and a salty bla- ck snout that's probably sniffi- ng for molecules of you up ther- e/tick off the divergence fat man oh- h millions of years between you and th- e seal/the sea-dog at home in a lar- der of fat/the whale-man wonderin- g if it's time to jump/I wouldn'- t would you/no?/then let's shou- t/FAT MAN COME BACK WE LOVE YOU/does- n't matter if it's not quite true/th- ere's no future in the rock's har- d pillow the sea's cold sheets/FA- T MAN YOU CAN'T DREAM THERE tel- l him with his brains bashed and th- e sea dipping a tongue into a worl- d famous delicacy/ and you have to be hu- man to know/MAKE THE CHOICE FAT MAN MA- KE THE CHOICE/can't tell it to the fa- mous retrieving seal whose sea is a m- oor brimming with herrings/with the won- derfully-barred marauder-faced mack- erel/and it's worked/he's groping a wa- y along the ledge dainty as a ballet dan- cer on points/well done everyone/h- ere he comes dislodging wi- th his hands fragments of shale tha- t tinkle as they trickle and boun- ce up over the ledge past his fee- t/ooo fat man that could be y- ou (frightened now because h- e sees in the giddy fall of inan- imate stone a whole book of conse- quences)/so well done everybod- y well done/here he comes the wha- le-man's return/extend him a hand. A Gift from the Tropics Wormholes from page 1 to the en- d and out through the cover- s/they weren't stopping/eating a- long the shelves through history an- d famous lives poetry and fiction/pre- cision-boring tunnel addicts cu- tting in the dark/life encounteri- ng the copyrighted thoughts of me- n (pub. early twentieth century/wo- men hadn't been invented yet)/to b- e followed page by page the diamet- er of an o/my! they ate through in- teresting words/hm! through dull cul- tural documents/tunnel-wizzards an- d paper chomping gut-pumps makin- g reading diff(0)cult (but never mi- nd)/turning the pages we can se- e the endlessness of life and the limi- ted attention it can give to ar- t/worms wriggling through systema- tic thought and the I-was-ther- e of the nineteenth-century trav- eller/the beating hearts of the po- ets/(it's enough to make a grow- ed man cry it fair break- s me up)/but seriously folk- s! at-the-end-of-the-day the worm- s have it/at home in the flesh o- f the polar bear and in books/don'- t eat that meat on the icefloe!/an- d don't say have a heart to the wor- ms/all they are are power-surge perfec- tionists out on the edge li- ke us all/deep-time traveller- s and eaters at the librarie- s' Smokey Joe's/eggs easy-over an- d red-eye gravy with the ham/hell! di- dn't you know that we too have to p- ay cash-down at the counter an- d all we ever want is something to eat.