DAMP
the day you left for good I let you fall
onto the quilt made you keep
the football shirt on started
where the hem rode up from the boxer rim
and drew my wet tongue up from the sponsor
to the crest up past the logo
of the kit designer to your armpit
where the smell like wet leaves drew me in
deeper and the musk and hair seemed like all
of the mulched world half hidden by the cuff
of the sleeve and the tongue never quite
getting in and the rain impatient at the window
and your eyes never quite wanting to meet mine
SKIRT
what possessed us? heads flipflopped from the wine
the food so posh it needed commentary
from the waitress each dish turned inside out
split into pieces then stumbling home
the stars so low they could have been driving
towards us getting back we began
the loose fall into each other that drink
always induces the body too soft
to pull or hold once we’d spun into the bedroom
I stepped back requesting each item
taken off in turn the shoes the jacket the shirt
each one flung with performed indifference
for the bottom half you’d gone for trousers
with a skirt over the top to recall
the flavour of some catwalk show I chose
the trousers next left the skirt on you the pleats
just long enough to cover your cock
and belted at your thin blades of stomach hair
your drunk imperfect body in a skirt
moving with each swaying breath looking like
some ancient tribesman in something someone
might have fashioned out of leaves to give room
for dancing to give space to the body
for its speechless articulation of thanks
SPIT
there are the men who like being spat on
long slow drool from someone knelt above them
like honey pouring itself over
the edge of a spoon into a warm bowl
I think asking someone to degrade you
is about wanting to know the body
is a solid presence in the room
it has stumbled into where the shy nectar
will be quick and heavy from their mouth
into yours there are things in my life
I did not handle well like the man
I slept with twice who found out he was
Positive and the third time as I felt
my body pull towards him I stopped
and asked instead if he knew when or who
he didn’t and described years of anonymity
in bars of wanting so much to step out
of his own mind he threw his body
into crowds pain being able to make us
forget our thoughts momentarily
though the morning after laying in bed
stilled from too much of too much there is
the slow return of wetness to your mouth
the one reminder that you are still alive
MAKING LOVE
home before you and wanting to start something
after weeks of petty fights and only touching
accidentally or when sleeping I grabbed
your laptop from the table went straight for
the internet history knowing that if
familiarity had unsexed me I could
find something to shock us back together
and I did and kept my arousal at halfpower
until you came back then threw you straight onto
the floor and pulled you up carried you to bed
and dropped you there like an unwanted present
and if someone had asked me what your name was
at that point I don’t think I could have remembered
there was only the moment I was trying
to give you the half open door of the laptop
your face pressed into the blank screen of the pillows
the evening sun setting the neighbourhood on fire
MAKING UP
those times when sex is an apology
when sorry isn’t a word but giving
the whole self over to the other one
who has been wronged or thinks they have been wronged
it is mostly less selfish not able
than to prove how cruel you have been
how much you have hated being hated
and to the thigh the crotch the chest you ask
with everything you have to be allowed back
it is nothing new but you do it
as if for the first time before
your bodies were ordinary to each other
and now it is precisely because
what you have to offer is so humble
that it makes you so much easier to forgive
ANAPHORA PENISES
I disagree with you on this
one small point the time you said of penises
when you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all I think
you’re wrong each one is fingerprint unique
each with its own way of being in the world
shy or all bravado or statesmanlike
it’s not size though you can feel each one trying
to push itself upright like a schoolboy
hoping to be called on to give an answer
it’s smaller things the smell of each one the way
the day can linger there beneath the slim lips
of the foreskin each with its own direction
each with its own personality its own
way of introducing itself each of them
a personal totem for the bearer
each its own low pendulum marking the passing
of each year with its own minutiae
of successes/changes/health scares each one
of singular importance to each singular
man each treasured and wept for and prone
to misjudgement and not to be trusted
CLEARANCE
there is a type of sex your mother would
never want for you one where you don’t kiss
where you barely touch where a friend comes round
to empty your life of your ex
and ends up on their knees amongst the cups
and birthday cards which have already
come to seem trivial it is not
what she would have hoped for when you were young
this selfishness this greed this rush to be
empty she had always taught you to be
gentle to put others before yourself
to give people a second chance she would
not have imagined there could be this side
to you she raised you so much better
PHONEBOX
the rain was a sudden unexpected caller
to the street the type that comes immediately
no prior drizzled suggestion of itself just
downpour and the phonebox was the only shelter
and it seemed to welcome me somehow larger
as though grateful for another use beyond
the frantic drug scores and weeping drunks locked out
of the station the rain’s taptapping fingers
were relentless on the glass my bus not due
for ten more minutes when he appeared
clothes heavy and clinging like wet armour
he looked so miserable I let him enter offered
the space as though I lived there he squeezed in
perhaps deciding it would be less awkward
if we didn’t face each other we both kept our
eyes on the sky reading it for any signs
of a break a puddle formed at his feet
as he dripped dry the back of his suit trousers
slowly let go of the outline of his boxers
and for a moment as he stepped back from a truck’s
loud grumble I felt the whole weight of him
pressed up against me and when he stepped forward
my clothes had patches of water where he’d been
small lakes of him resting in the seams
to a passerby we might have looked like lovers
ready to be buried together but before
I could even ask his name or make some joke
about the small wings his wet shoulder blades had left
on my chest the sky relit itself and he left
our shelter without speaking as easily
as someone who had tried to make a call
but found the line dead as they’d hoped it would be
LAST TRAIN
the threeseaters have become beds
for the last workers out of Sheffield
one young man reclines as if
in a sauna when the heat has loosened
the body and the balls are at their lowest
what would it be to lay with him
naked as a navvy to lick him dry
of the day he’s had to be still with him
as the night outside hardens down to coal
WORKMAN
be a welcoming host serve him
coffee keep out of his way
noise is how he lets you know
he’s useful learn to embrace it
do not resent the dust think of it
as all his sweat made solid run
your finger through it put out your tongue
and feel the roughness of his trade
offer him more coffee ask him
about his wife when he raises
his hands to the top shelf
he is mending try not to look
too obviously as his shirt
prises its way out of its tuck
and shows a belly midway between
muscled and beer
I know what work is it is
the completing of a thing half-done
something perhaps that you started
but failed at and so had to ask
for help when he comes it is because
you have called him open your door
he will be dressed brazenly
in paint and the rubble of his labours
invite him in ask him to take
his shoes off shake his hand point him
towards the place where he is needed
DANCER
even sitting here in this cafe his body
seems tense as if at any moment the eye
might pass something to the brain which would require
an explanation with the limbs he never
lets his joints relax into their socketgrooves
each movement the beginning of a potential
work of art he is alert even after rehearsal
when I invite him back to the flat to shower
before that night’s performance he moves through
the rooms so carefully as though deciding
a way to best inhabit them I’d imagined
he would be too beautiful to be curious
but each shelf and photo receives his audience
of wet hair tight body where each part’s connection
to another part is visible his battered
feet leaving their notations on the false wood floor
his silent transitory music playing
out beyond my ability to follow
PRIEST
forgive me I know that I am staring
it’s just I had thought devotion
to another made one plain but you
dear Father have taken your body
as the rough clay of its beginning
seen it as your duty to sculpt it
your tight black shirt a public prayer
to the beauty of creation dog collar
stretched around a neck grown thick from lifting
in the gym and you’re reading When God Talks Back
a page or two then wandering the cafe
table to table seeming to know
each customer by name everyone
who we believe when they say
that they have spoken to God goes on
to head a congregation which must mean
that God is telling them that he is lonely
I go to the bathroom wait outside
as a girl convenes with herself
whilst the tap runs I watch two students
approach you ask loudly if you can explain
the Anglican approach to something the end of what
is lost beneath the steam hiss
of coffee machines you seem able
to reassure them I suppose
that is what people want from religion
to ask of someone else things they would not ask
of one another the girl emerges
wringing her hands to dry them you go back
to your book I wonder
if there is a chapter on shyness
on disguising yourself as a bush
setting it aflame or the murder
of your only Son the ways we might
draw people towards us the lengths the Lord
might go to to have someone to speak to
LOCAL TRAIN
take for example the boy opposite
his body like a river which has not yet gathered
the rain it takes to learn the limits of the self
are malleable a single unbroken curve
from the underside of his jaw to his spread legs
the things which age him at late teenage are debris
caught on him from someone else’s life the nose ring
the slight moss of hair on his arms and his stomach
as he takes a gym bag bigger than his torso
from the luggage rack oh to be that young again!
to have a body not yet dragged and creased by age
to be as slight and brief of flesh to be a man
without the heaviness it brings to be able
to feel where each of the bones meets the skin to still
be learning how deep the waters of desire
can run to be unafraid of drowning
INTIMATES
I’m wearing your underwear to the office
after a long fortnight of working
and not enough time to sort and wash
the stains that mark our progress through a day
I want to make a kink from this necessity
but don’t get how is it that undressing
later you’ll see something of yourself
on me and want it back? is it that I’ve taken
without asking and this slight transgression
reframes me as a stranger? is it
something about simply feeling closer?
the rub of the other against the self
in their absence? I feel none of that
as I pull the boxers from a pile
where each identical pair smell of detergent
and are slightly too small for my body
which has spread through comfort since you moved in
but all day something of yours is hugging
close to the worst parts of myself less than
a year ago I could not have imagined
the possibility of something so wonderful
TRAIN
of course there is always another one
like him skin only barely able to conceal
the angles of the skull looking as though
he is being told off his eyes cast down
to The Book of Sleep there’s always
someone like him the beauty of his face
its clean lines and then sudden disturbance
of a cough
that seems to come up
from the same place that hunger does
and his arm across the mouth to cover
it like a wrestler like someone being
mugged tonight I’ll lay awake thinking
of him his grey eyes open
in another city I hope he’ll be
cured of his afflictions in this life
I have chosen to love only one man
and I am still in search of evidence
to prove that this was not a wrong idea
I would flee, and I would stay. Amen
The Acts of John
RETURNING
over each other like hastilystacked chairs
digging further into one another
pulling back the balls and scrotum and nosing
through the brackentrail to your anus I am
trying to stay in the moment not consider
the human desire to consume what it loves
that it must have something to do with
containing the world its perfect roundness
folded into the dark and crawling with you
back towards this most base of our needs to taste
something of the foul swamp of our origin
to bring our faces to the door through which
all disgust and pleasure is in hiding
from the abandonments the wet streets
the unrelenting ugliness of this world
NOTES & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
‘first time posh’ uses ‘posh’ in the euphemistic sense to mean masturbating whilst wearing a condom
‘Jocasta’ reconsiders the eponymous mother’s life after Oedipus’ death
‘with child’ describes the Brankston Cement Menagerie
‘boxing booth’ is thinking of the boxing matches that would tour with Fairgrounds a spieler is someone who introduced each fighter to the crowd
‘damp’ is for Zaffar Kunial though not about him
thanks to Dan and Lucy for their generosity in letting me use their cottage where many of these poems were written or edited
thanks to Robin Robertson for his generosity insight and intelligence in editing this manuscript
thanks to Seán Hewitt who always read bad drafts so diligently and to others Fiona Benson Antony Dunn Niven Govinden Sarah Hymas Helen Mort Okey Nzelu Helen Tookey who read these poems so patiently
thanks to the following publications where previous versions of these poems appeared Adroit Journal Ambit Cake Cent Granta Hwaet: 20 years of Ledbury Poetry Festival Lambda Literary Literary Review New Boots and Pantisocracies New Statesman The North Oxford Poetry Poems in Which Poetry Poetry London Poetry Review The Reader The Scores The Valley Press Anthology of Yorkshire Poets White Review Wordlife Anthology some were first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 & 4