Joseph Minden

Three Poems

Customs

Well after midnight, one road of white
Dover leads to this hangar mouth,
this lit square, where the framed light
seems to stand up. The driver is out of the coach,
out on the tarmac, so transfixed by the mouth
he is leant forward as if stuck by his face

to the sight of it, the mouth, the lit square. We face
it too, sitting left of the aisle in the white
and beige coach parked hastily, adjacent to the mouth
of this one particular hangar. I touch my mouth
because a fly who flew in through the coach
door chooses my mouth as a sofa place to alight

on and the fly goes off so fast it hits the reading light
and pings in a stupid, uncontrolled way at the face
of someone sat right of the aisle of the coach,
Dutch I think, certainly very pale and white
but also with a very very very red mouth.
Outside, the driver puts a cigarette in his mouth.

‘What stupid driver is this!’ the very wet mouth
of the Ghanaian man says into the spotlight
of the reading light. A German couple open their mouth
to laugh, a space in a very happy face
and another face, and inside they are bright white
with yoghurt. It’s late at night and I think the coach

has sunk to a deep place. The driver looks back at the coach.
Something is happening in the hangar mouth
but it cannot be seen. His eyes flash with the white,
mouth light. Coelacanths are blind in bright light.
One seat in the coach is empty. What was the face
there, wrapped in a towel? I keep my mouth

shut. The Japanese tourist has spots all over her mouth.
I have one of the mouths in a mouth-stuffed coach.
There is a French-speaking Muslim woman with a face.
The Somalian man has a moustache near his mouth.
These faces hang like shields in the watery light.
I look at my book’s black letters and the gaps are white.

My opening mouth is a big, old fish mouth.
There’s a face from the coach in the square, light
cave and the eyes on the face are blind and white.

 

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