It is a truism that Elizabeth Bishop was in the habit of waiting for decades for her material to discover an apt form, something her friend Robert Lowell celebrated in a poem: Do you still hang your words in air, ten years unfinished, glued to your notice board, with gaps or empties for the unimaginable phrase– unerring […]
Poetry
Three Poems
Girls Rowing after Sailing to Byzantium, W.B. Yeats, 1926 What with all the mackerel, and the trees full of birds the left-behind elderly women still see possibility though it’s no country for old men, or so they say, having listened long to the sages or figured themselves in that way. The last to leave – […]
Three Poems
REMEMBERING THE AMBOS MUNDOS They gave us the room next to Hemingway’s: the hotel’s best view — harbour, fortress, green wooded slopes right opposite our rusted balcony. Still we’d drag the shutters closed at noon, struggling to twist the eggshaped handle that kept them locked and stopped the wind banging them on the frames. And […]
Three Poems
The Plural of Unconscious, or Painting The Forth Bridge Single example in the OED of its use being owned, at least, by a volitional subject, is Norman Mailer, of all people, havering, ‘but that may be my unconsciouses speaking.’ Living ten flights up, the sky’s traffic comes to displace street level stuff, […]
The Fates Visit A House Which Is Not Charles Darwin’s
THE FATES VISIT A HOUSE WHICH IS NOT CHARLES DARWIN’S I The Fates stand by the crib. It is midday, but they have darkened the room for effect. The baby’s mother stands opposite them, her hands folded over her apron. First Fate: This child is destined for great things. Second Fate: This child will change […]
Three Poems
Baptism When the brick work becomes important, and then the wall, perhaps the river will help us, offering its taut surface and mild depth, in the way that a horse so loves the alien taste of peppermint, or molasses rubbed on the bit.
Four Poems
Q&A for an unfair world Will this meeting ever end? No. What are we saying goodbye to? Everything. Is the wrong person in charge? Yes.
Transfiguration
Transfiguration An indifferent god raised his fist and before my eyes crushed my son. I stood frozen in the yellow light of the tiny spare bedroom I’d made into a study, breathless at the cruelty. I’d failed the first test. I felt sorry for myself, stunned by rage at the corruption of my new father’s […]
Two Poems
To Carolina Kostner on Boléro XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi Because I live for the comeback staged in black—cold expanse waiting to be writ—because I love the way one arm lifts in time to what Ravel imagined as a masterpiece with no music, repetition made magic only because each shift intensifies, piston or hammer in […]
Two Poems
The Comeback There I was hunched over a canso in the aparthotel, the day grey, the year unclear and the bed empty. A city again, jackhammers and cranes, the district repeating itself, rising from the mud for the umpteenth time. My love, I began, what have I done to wake up again? From the tangle […]
Three Poems
Second Sight Some lads see a gap where others see traffic, shirtless stroll across immune to horns and gestures. In clubs they take their chances with promises and boasts. They meet their matches. But I see ghost cars on an empty road. The days of taking off my top for football in the park, […]
Two Poems
Ms Mott Appoints a Future Bot as Apostle Because you don’t have cells that will forget, because I trust that you’ll uphold all that I ask you to uphold, that you will not reshape, distort or falsify to serve a purpose much at odds with one it seems would never harm a soul, it is […]
Three Poems
Men More Comfortable in a Flat Back Four About war, they say, there is nothing new to expect from its aftermath. It is as common to come home to a performance in both song and dance of long narrative poems, as it is to come home to silence and recrimination. It is the conduct of […]
Two Poems
Hernia Perhaps the inguinal canal was weakened by the piano we hauled down three flights with a chime and a plink, out to the lorry where we rolled and smoked a spliff. Or compromised by those concrete slabs I lifted and laid with dad. Or charcoal bags, hoisted and hefted into the van, delivered to […]
Three Poems
Poems from Squid Squad #25 As she walks in a widening circle, Lola Wheeler leaves a spiral of footprints in the snow. Bradley Ridley feeds the chickens the chestnuts. Hank Strunk drums on an upturned bucket. Any metaphor is a metaphor for the idea of metaphor, Natalie Chatterley mutters. Chaffinches chew at the chocolate sultanas. […]
Uncles
Uncles I went into the living room suddenly to find one of my little nephews scrubbing his arms with an eraser – huge livid weals had formed. I asked him what he was doing and he replied he was trying to rub himself out so he could be drawn all over again. I said it […]
Two Poems
I Am There was a time he could fix anything – opening the Telegraph on his iPad – on a tractor himself – scraping his mother’s jam on his toast – everything was done by hand – the printing press is dead – with a gripe, and they’d pile the shit up on the midden […]
Under the Bridges
Under the Bridges 1. I’m growing under bridges. Looking up at bridges, looking through one bridge to the next. Different shapes making different shapes. Trying to name all the shapes but having to make up names for new shapes. Octohedragon, climbadecadon, redrangle. The bridges don’t look like they move, but they do. Cars and trucks […]
Two Poems
Desire …Now women are at their foulest, / But men are weak since they are parched in the head and knees / By Sirius… Alcaeus Outside is that summer which we longed for on winter nights from underneath our layers of eiderdown, remembering the sudden dawns and sultry weather, the freedom of bare legs, the […]
Excerpt from Forgotten Work
Excerpt from Forgotten Work Like all young bands, they bandied names about All evening. Lou, the lead guitar, liked “Lout,” A word that clubbed you like a cord of wood. It’s dumb, said Lou, but arty dumb, like blood- Smeared dolls deployed as drumsticks—Henry Rollins Does Dada. Jim, on keys, preferred “The Dolphins,” After […]
Three Poems
Home Like a wary traveller suddenly at the door, she’d ask about the corncrake and if I ever heard its call. It was, I used to think, a simple question – nothing cosmic, deep or existential – she was, I just assumed, adjusting to the time to which she had returned. To tell the truth, […]
Three Poems
Rehearsal They look like they could be going somewhere. The bass player’s bringing everything he owns. The cellos and bass park closest to the door. There’s a list of their names, a place for coats. I can’t help thinking of toothbrushes, soap, honey wrapped for the journey in clothes, the instruments left at home […]
Two Poems
Louise Tonight you have set out all the keys on the oak table. They lie on the grained and pitted surface, each with its own design, finials of love-knots, triquetras, plain oval loops. You align them carefully, crosswise to the grain, you lay them out as you would lay out the cards for a reading, […]
Blue
Blue Months on it recurs in disparate forms, the famous blue of those ubiquitous chairs in orderly rows, sun loungers and parasols, striped blue on bone white sand, the graduated blue of the middle of August reflected in the tinted lenses of new sunglasses bought to replace a pair left at home. Certain tiles – […]
Three Poems by Xi Chuan, translated by Lucas Klein
Eight Fragments 1. Which Pornographic Peach Blossom Which pornographic peach blossom dreamt of me biting into this juicy peach and thought up this question in the orchard of the Queen of the West? I, the Monkey King, stole in here—and now I must steal out. 2. Facing the Sea Facing the sea, back toward […]