we hung our wetsuits on the tentpoles teachers
jokingly asking if we’d pissed in them later
lit by dusk the suits become an audience
peering into us that’s what I decide on
for fantasy as I slip my hand inside
the sleeping bag use the other to force a space
to work in and trying to stay silent check
my friends’ snores are still in rhythm with the wind
on the canvas its only afterwards
someone’s breath seems to falter perhaps smelling
something familiar and afraid his body
has betrayed him again we don’t mention it
as we slip our wetsuits back on the next day
I squeeze myself in suddenly aware
of the lumps and curves of my adolescent
frame as the waves arch their backs far out at sea
we prepare ourselves for another lesson
this one on bravery how in open water
the swell that seems as though it could overwhelm you
can come to break as almost nothing on the shore
JOCASTA
before I do let me tell you what I’ve learned
you still have to wake up and carry on
I hadn’t really mourned my husband much
before this young one arrived inside the gates
his penetration went so deep inside
it felt like a returning something coming
home I think I worked it out before he did
but I had missed him all these years and missed
my husband the brain is not logical
the body is not a desert even as
we age when he learnt the truth he looked repulsed
part of me had always thought all men desired
to re-enter the chamber of their birth
that war was just a symptom of their rage
at not being able to well my boy
licked the sides I’d pushed him through found the nipples
I’d fed him with and couldn’t live with what
he’d done so now my loverson has empty
breadbaskets for eyes and his father has
a shallow grave outside the city walls
and so I’ve learnt to trust only what I have
in this one small room this square of light
this handful of neck this noose this table
this one short step
WITH CHILD
before my birth my mother walked with concrete
animals two hours before that she’d pulled
into the hard shoulder a headache boring
through her skull nine months before that she’d made
tea heavy with the weight of knowing something
had been done sat to eat as tension misted at the windows
and one morning having carried me almost
full term my mother sat up in bed saying
with an uncommon strength that they had to drive
north to the park with the life-sized animal
sculptures and she wouldn’t say why except
it felt right the unborn son with the whole life
ahead the animals who would weather better
live longer than her and would still be there
when their warmblooded relatives were extinct
PATERNUS
it feels voyeuristic
seeing it here on the street
windtossed nest small down lingering
between the fingers of the twigs
seeming somehow dense but light
like a gathering of private
hair shorn off in preparation
for the letting go of someone
I am thinking of my mother
of my sister who is pregnant
for the second time of all
the empty rooms in the city
of patience of waiting for a birth
of these tiny eggs at my feet
of this being one less time the shell
will crack life will shudder out hungry
DEATH DREAM
I am six and walking in the woods
with my dad someone has died or been told
they are dying and I am taken away
drama unfolds in the trees ahead
but every time it burns itself out
before we reach it only the aftermath
the hound its mouth in the open purse
of the stomach the hot wet stink around its lips
the fox an empty robe laid out on the ground
neck broken eyes ripened from their sockets
and either side of the brokenbridgespine
the synapses are fizzing like a bulb
about to lose the last of its light
FIRST TIME SEXTING
too young or shy for the real thing
I used the internet to find
another boy my age both of us
old enough to know what we wanted
wasn’t ‘ordinary’ that no one
taught it us in schools but our bodies
seemed drawn towards this thing we couldn’t
articulate and so we described
it to each other nightly for hours
what we imagined it might be
what we knew our bodies could do alone
whether they could do the same with
someone else for months we texted that way
in different schools hiding at the back
of different English lessons naming
the places we thought we’d like to meet
each other which in truth were places
we were used to being with ourselves
our bedrooms the shower cubicle
then one day in the rush for lunch
I left my phone out on a table
and someone read the contents to the Year
and I stepped back into a room
covered in the ooze of a secret
split open and their faces were
red with it I could see the secret dripping
from their lips and I grabbed my mobile
which you’d think I’d say was heavier
but it felt lighter somehow and I ran
outside and cried and for the first time ever
refused to go to class
and my phone sat vibrating
in my pocket like a heartbeat
refusing to be silent maybe
halfwanting to be discovered
WATCHING THE STUDENTS
they know I am not of their time I am
to them a jug of water with a meal
something they need but don’t notice a glass
through which they want to see themselves I can’t
show them anything tell them what I want to
of their beauty it is something they must
learn in negotiation with each other
there is nothing I could ever ask for
except for this one chance to watch them
on a quiet afternoon they are
so lonely for love they can’t be alone
they wander the grounds to find each other
they sit arguing the terms of how
their bodies will exist together
how they will survive the knowing of each other
FIRST TIME PENETRATION
we needed two attempts the first time
was so cold in the unheated loft room
of a friend’s house I’d moved to at sixteen
that all we could do was force our bodies
close enough to save a little heat
the second time I planned a little more
a portable heater kicking out
a charred dust smell leading him upstairs
the room artificially hot stripping
off instantly how practical I was
not really wanting to be touched or kissed
or to do anything that might delay
w
hat I thought I needed heater unplugged
the room dropping colder almost instantly
walking to the bed kneeling down on it
as though praying and him coming at me
with his bare inarticulate thrusting
that couldn’t hold off long enough for pain
to give way into something like pleasure
and I remember feeling something drip
I’ve left a present on your back he said
and I showed him out past the bedroom
of my housemate the bed I’d taken
to sleeping in most mornings when she’d gone
early to the station I’d set the bath
running and keep warm under the covers
still muggy with her presence one time
I fell asleep woke to water coming
through the ceiling as though the sky had slipped
inside the house and I just lay there
not moving thinking there was nothing
to be done but wait for it to pass through
the different layers of house hope it might
dry out might still be standing afterwards
PERSONAL TRAINER
remember first the body must be bruised
so it can heal itself stronger tense your stomach
I am going to punch you as though you were
a weight bag I’ll hit your sleeping abdominals
force them awake I will punch you though I know
you’ve never been punched before smacked yes
on your wrist or your arse to reprimand you
as a child but never someone wanting
to hurt you I will punch you so your body
grows more resilient so it learns the centre
of its own gravity I will punch you
until you go slack and then I’ll send you home
in the morning you will ache you will feel
as though you have been trodden on standing
or sitting will require you to fold yourself
like a hinge your muscles will not yet be ready
to be stretched this will last for days until
you’re ready to be punched again it is
in this way I will build you your abs screwing
tighter every week holding themselves closer
to the surface of the skin like the knuckles
of a fist which is being clenched and pushed forwards
MAKING WEIGHT
some of the self must be cut down before the fight
which means this ritual of icebath
and then laying on the bed swaddled
like someone ready to be sacrificed
and then back into the cold water
and repeat three times or taking laxatives
to help the self lighten while a friend sitting
in the bedroom pretends he can’t recognise
the smell of everything not vital
to the body’s survival being emptied
distracts himself thinking of the other
young man in his bedsit north of the city
who has not got far enough towards the weight
and so is trying to bulk rapidly
who is eating two three times his own mass
who it’s possible to imagine eating whole
chickens cows like a sideshow attraction
at a carnival so by the time both meet
at the match they are surprised to see
they look the same that each has been working
to ensure they’d meet in the ring as equals
both of them trying to be a slightly better
version of the other and now waxed hairless
almost naked and their friends at ringside
who have given up some pounds and want a show
WATCHING MMA
having booked a hotel in a town with the same name
in the wrong state and the Amtrak already leaving
into the hills I checked in to a Howard Johnson
it was as if they’d built the motel the church next door
then moved the town ten miles down the road I ordered
takeaway pizza and turned on the TV hurried
through the local news and preachers to the sport where two
caged men were going to fight until one of them lay
unconscious or tapped out or one of them landed enough
strikes against the other to be awarded more points
the match started like any drunken scrap
each flirting with the space between each other a few
punches to the air for range and then taking it down
to the mat and for the longest time they seemed to lay
on top of one another jerking suddenly
writhing like a fleshcoloured bag of small animals
and if you ignored the clenched fists the costumes the head
split like a yoghurt pot and leaking if you forgot
the cage the phlegm dragged up from the lungs by exertion
the empty look in the eyes of the defeated man
they could have been lovers reuniting
BOXING BOOTH
i
if you haven’t got a ring rope off
a square of land before you’ve even fought
you have to set the stage and draw the crowd
let the spieler list your reputation
as though this were your eulogy
see which young man volunteers so earnest
as though he has waited his whole young life
to prove himself let him wait awhile
against the ropes and posts you’d use
to tether horses let the crowd’s shouts
flay him where he stands let the anger
make him dizzy then ring the bell
ii
imagine being Gregor waking
one morning to find that Kafka has
transformed you you’ve lost your agency
with the pads on your insect feet
like trying to pick something up
in boxing gloves all limbs suddenly
angular as though broken and you
might in a wet throated buzz try
articulating why it was you
were chosen as a symbol that men
equate power with the suffering
of others why it is when men look down
at the fraying cloth of their hearts
their instinct is to mend it with their hands
iii
when the young pretender has been floored
and you’ve scrambled for the loose coins
with a red torn large ham hock of a hand
it’s time to take down the show and move
it on how quickly the ruckus
in the dirt is brushed clean over
how quickly things can be dismantled
and the violence held inside dispersed
except a buzzing that hangs heavy
in the air seems to follow you home
seems to be coming from inside of you
and wakes you each day before dawn fresh
from dreaming of fists and teeth and weeping
and slick with the shame of what you’ve done
you reach under the sheets find yourself changed
II
it be right that the men who have benefited us should be called gods
The Acts of John
PRAISE POEM
last night you sang to my body
praised every inch of it
made it feel rare and royal
spoke to it the way you might speak
to a child in need of self
esteem taking time on each part
the mouth and the tongue
the nipples and the chest
praising the severity
of the circumcision and how
I talked to the older couple
in the b
ar who had been praising
my father I’d thought my body
dull and base I’d thought it loose
and wilted from the weight loss
but you composed hymns to it
cleaned it bowed down before it
as though it might save you
BLOOD
we could be gathered for the reading of a will
each of us wanting to learn what it is
we have inherited from the one who loved
or did not love us the nurse calls me in
for bloods says she could get it from a stone wraps
my upper arm taps the inside of my elbow
as though it is a trunk she is trying to coax
sap from I close my eyes and when I open them
it’s done sitting mottled in its canister
and there are the questions to be answered
yes I know the risks associated and yes
once he was Brazilian yes I did ask
positive no protection when I leave
I feel a dread moving in that will not lift
for two weeks settling down to the front
of my skull until the text comes through
and I am light again having put my ear
to the dense secrets of my blood and heard nothing
but the curious weight which has been passed down
through the generations of this family
to know how close to us the dead are sitting
and to believe we honour them best by living
INHERITANCE
you call me to task roll onto your stomach
without a word from you I know to take my tongue
and run it the length of your back base of spine
to ears where the teeth will let themselves be heard
its not a straight line that does it but rather
random lappings like spots of rain before a storm
it is something I was told by someone else
who showed me on my own back when it’s done right
it sends a feeling of surprise towards
the neck escaping as brief moans and so it is
I pass it on and isn’t this what humankind
was made for? telling stories learning where the skin
is most in need of touch teaching as we ourselves
were taught of pleasure