Before the shower
You smell like garden,She says, meaning soil,Wood and water. True, I have been at play,Breaking planters whichCould not withstand rain. She flowers; I bend to tend.You smell like garden,She says, again.
Poetry
Upon seeing a sculpture of a nest in an art gallery on a hot day
The pelican at the front deskWas enough to make you weep.Beak stuck with violenceIn the breast. Blood welled out the clay, and downTo clotted tongues, more smeared beaks,To red and ready maws. BloodGiven up for blood. Her chicks were slight beneath her bulk.She seemed shrunken by their wants.They were made to make us sob, soBlame …
Upon seeing a sculpture of a nest in an art gallery on a hot day Read More »
Dying light
Our touring, our junketing stalled at Orkney.We shed waterproofs,fogged the windscreen, nodded along with McCartney,waiting for the sun.Our guide described horizons flecked with haloes,sea hissing through harr,fires that stuttered on jutting tallow-smeared stonesplanted in peat and,alongside bones (or charred fragmented clay),a brown skull gathering rain. Its brow lay low like the island, cropped by cords,lengthened …
Electrosurgery
Later you explained the tug in your left sideusing diagrams of divided womanhood, unpacking pamphlets of pink chaliceswith lowered fallopian horns. The flesh, it transpired,didn’t resemble an apple core. Nor did white flecks flarelike malign constellations. But when he touched the loopto your mutable field, it set you aflame.State the fact: your body was fixedby …
and autumn does not turn in pixels
in photos we wear smileswhite bow ties flap rented gowns likefab ri cated sha dows perpetually strolling downjowett walk leaves scuff shoes buffednot long before this or that morn ingthey daw dle at …
Message recovered from a satellite
If you are reading this,by some miracle, find our home.Find the glassy marble,fractured, but somehow stillrolling around a red-faced giant –a star we called the sun. Your fall will be brokenby mortuary houses,tumuli, blasted cairns,dusty relics, ruinedmonuments to fatal moments –grim faces set in stone. Understand, we did morethan erect walls, divide Berlinand fortify China,but …
Field trip
Recount for me,the succession of things.When one wave ended,others began:dunes which bristled with grass,petals pressed by quadrants,innumerable shells.Our task –shared by aspirant busloads –was to count and markand chart a censusof snails.Next year, same season,our teacher would waxbefore our siblings.We had passedthat stage – a wave gone out.Would you recountthe successionof things?
Glacial relicts
Mum swims with eyes closed,a face that, reflected, runs into itself.Her children dry on mossy stones. Sticky with lake and melon,we idly trace scaled-down,and brittle coastlines. Those mottled smudges, grandad would proclaimpointing at lichen through his coat pocketshave been marching since Alexander. See? With that, he’d crouchclose to the neon crustradiant with joy. I, recalling …
Two storms
A Golden Shovel poem, after Fu Hsuan I. Grief follows like thunder,crossing the channel. An armyof prayers salt my father’s heart. While the grand organ trembleswe throw damp confetti,give the occasion a lift. II. The evening is balmy,blanketed by thunderhead. Restless, my brother rises fromhis bedclothes to bathe. On a pale clod of pillowhairs stray …
Inheritance
Behind sliding doors: an inheritance,Gifts passed across and down. Fusty leather broken at the elbow.Corduroy grazed by candlelight.Shoes without laces. The true heirlooms hung to one side,swatches of pale morning:blue button-ups. Something to grow into.