I boast of my Danish uncle who fought in the resistance.
You stress yours was an uncle only by marriage.
Where is this going? Nowhere, but we are persistent,
stripping off layers of skin to expose raw nerves,
find iron in blood, the cross in the ribcage –
what of us that shows through, what it proves
Out of Order
You say a sign should hang from my ear,
you say torture with Chinese Whispers,
like the door on the toilet refusing to flush.
I’ll say whatever comes into my ear as shush.
I say there is no blockage, no glue or wax,
you’ll accuse me of negative feedback,
just nerves dead as disconnected wires.
I say thank God for books, my ear retires,
you say playing with a rotary phone
far from the playground’s monotone,
picking up the receiver to my good ear,
you say you’ll get me in the mere –
bad: dial tone/no dial tone, is wacko.
Oh-noes playing Marco Polo,
I say I’m testing how to differentiate
a unilateral ear unable to locate
between fitting in/not fitting in.
Oi! Are you deaf or something?
A Map Towards Fluency
I. BEDROCK
(is this cheating?)
II. DEPOSITION OF SEDIMENT
Words are shifting animals
a fish is a handshimmer
a bird, a forefinger beaking a thumb
a cat is claws, preening whiskers
Colours clothe the body in a flash of flesh
Red brushes lips Blue strokes back of hand
Green grazes forearm Black knuckles cheek
Pink taps nose White flares fingers
What has happened to Alex?
Helena has changed her shift, and is here
Late from an audition, Sophie circles sorry at the centre of her chest, her cheeks
a tapped nose
We bring our colours and animals with us
Helena, a forefinger beaking thumb, settles on the edge of her chair
Alex, an absent handshimmer
III. OUTCROP
Jean
our teacher
is a landmark
All eyes look to her
What can you see out of your
peripheral vision? Furrows forming
and reforming on ever more familiar faces
Gestures formed and reformed by ever more
familiar hands: rings, scars, tattoos. We keep our
distance. Eyes cannot whisper. Air, larynx, tongue:
all fingers and thumbs. As a child, Jean was forced to
sit on her hands. Don’t point! Don’t touch! Now her hands
guide us towards an alternative view. She signs, we are touched
IV. PRECIOUS MINERALS
Context is everything
We are unearthing
the philosopher’s stone
Base metal can be turned into a fist
on a fist
flexing into splayed fingers
Bank is a fist with thumb cocked, stamping the palm
Aid is a fist with thumb up, proffered on the palm
How old? fingers dance on the nose
How much? fingers dance on the chin
Alex is in a heavy metal band
On a world tour without him, it is laughing all the way to
the fist with thumb cocked, stamping the palm
Helena’s fingers dance on her chin
On a world tour without him, it cannot offer
a fist with thumb up, proffered on the palm
Alex says he is feeling his age
Sophie’s fingers dance on her nose
V. EROSION
I imagine our hands chopped off as Philomela had her tongue cut out
What would there be to say? How would we say it?
Not able to weave our stories into a tapestry
Alex unable to drum his rhythm. Sophie
unable to sign her song. Helena
unable to recall her felt-tipped
fingers. Alex laughs, which
is how it should be
We are going our
separate ways
towards fluency
and erosion
The future
a hand thrust
forward
the past
a wave
over the
shoulder
A Desultory Day
It’s the sort of day with spit but no polish,
the sort of day when a neighbour makes hay
with my husband’s amiable manner
and extracts a maybe to sort out her fruit trees.
It’s the sort of day you say, It’s that sort of day
to help you get through. It’s the sort of day
I fall in love with a Japanese man
for the way he stands magnificently
in his trunks while his daughters play croquet.
It’s the sort of day a towel serves
as a skirt, and a jumper as a headscarf,
the sort of day eyes jump from horse rider
to horse rider in the bay. It’s the sort of day
a father drags a pram across the sand backwards,
the sort of day a fat baby tries to catch
fat feet, the sort of day when not just thoughts stray.
The Dogs of Pénestin
Argos,1 Hound,2 Banga,3 Lassie,4
Son-of-George,5 Bear,6 Snowy,7
Fang,8 Gyp,9 Old Yeller,10 Toto,11
Böwser vön Überdog,12 Sorry-oo,13
Cadpig, Lucky, Roly Poly, Patch,14
Pearl the Wonder Dog,15 Ponch,16
Crab,17 Frank the Pug,18 Skulker,19
Bull’s-eye,20 K9,21 John Joiner,22
Prince Amir of Kinjan,23 Wellington,24
Hong Kong Phooey,25 Gai-Luron,26
Sirius,27
Cerebrus.28
1. Waits by the gate for his mistress, in Syria with Médecins Sans Frontières.
2. Destroyed for leaving gigantic, muddy footprints.
3. His master is a Pilates instructor, partial to a Margarita cocktail.
4. Rescued a young boy from the sea at Loscolo.
5. Sheep worrier, hated by Brécean farmer Gabriele Chêne.
6. Chocolate Labrador belonging to Luka who also has a bear called Dog.
7. An adventurous wire-fox terrier regularly walked by a failed abstract artist.
8. Belongs to the seven-foot-six gamekeeper of Le Lesté.
9. Trots at the heels of his carpenter master.
10. Enjoys wild boar hunts with Travis Manteaux.
11. Penchant for chewing his mistress’s red slippers.
12. A vicious bulldog; detests the llamas from Cirque Medrano.
13. Howls at the moon and dreams of his wolf brothers in Brocéliande.
14. Puppies owned by Cruella de la Ville, a supporter of Marine Le Pen.
15. German Shorthaired Pointer, a couch-potato pooch.
16. Appears to live in some sort of squirrel universe.
17. Described by his incontinent master as a cruel-hearted cur.
18. Owned by a policeman who claims he can talk.
19. Huge, purple tongue hangs half a foot out of his mouth.
20. A white shaggy dog, with his face scratched and torn in twenty different places.
21. Bark has a metallic ring. His master, Dr Qui, collects watches.
22. Saved a kitten from being eaten by two giant rats.
23. Afghan Hound puppy that makes a mess on the cliff paths.
24. Poodle involved in a gardening accident.
25. Belongs to a mild-mannered janitor who dabbles in martial arts.
26. Melancholic Basset Hound from the same litter as Droopy.
27. Heavenly dog worshipped by all the other dogs
of Pénestin.
28. No one who enters his property, Enfer, is seen coming out alive.
Anonymous
after the New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner, 1993
On the internet, nobody knew I was a dog,
how I’d raise my hind leg to piss, bark
viciously at cats on my anonymous blog.
O trolls, those dog days were a lark.
I, Sirius, outshone all in the Canis Major,
blew my master’s whistle in his park.
Bitch! he yelled. Track and cage her.
Failed to guess at my dog’s bollocks,
as I buried my bone-to-pick deeper
in the Darknet where encryption locks.
Once bitten, twice bitcoin:
a silken road to Anything Stocked.
Second lifer, don’t whimper – feign
identities. Dangle spam bait, flog
lives as authorities neuter the anodyne.
Only saps are hacked as they iSlog.
On the internet, nobody knows I am a dog.
A Chorus of Jacks in 13 Texts
after Porphyria
UR t% BUTful 4 yor Lyf 2 nd happily, t% BUTful 4 a closing shot of yor fAC :–) in2 a soapy sunset
We knew he’d b a cad, wear u lIk arm candy, reveal intimacies Ovr cards f he c % d plA NEthing mo sophisticated thN >@< Crush
He mA L%k lIk a Victorian gentleman, w Hs moustache & side-burns, bt he’s a digital darling, kEpn Hs connections OpN
U wer born out of era. aL yor letters shud b RitN on violet paper, scented w violet water, sealed w a violet :–*
insted UR forced 2 sext DIS vile man, endure Hs violent demands 4 <) & beer, Hs insistence dat tap H2O iz BetA 2 bathe n thN bubLE
We hav Hs number, we hav aL Hs on9 accounts hacked. d 3: o) he met Bhind yor beautifully-boned bak iz not evN an on9 comment, a Facebook Like, retweet, not evN hEr
Don’t wori we wud not harm a hair on yor hed cuz U L%k aftR yor hair, & she didn’t. It wz tied bak w a rubR band, & itz casualness wz unbearable
2 tink how he wound dat rat tail rownd Hs fingers wen dey kissed, whIl U sat aloN by d window, yor tresses holdN d moon’s gleam
2 tink dat makes us cry & so she had 2 cry too, 2 knO how much it hrtz 2 luv U lIk we do
4giv us 4 bn soppy, bt U mAk us sentimental, mAk us txt things we shouldn’t, mAk us flame, mAk us troll
Really, it’s yor fault. f it wz not 4 yor yeLo hair, yor smooth white sholdR bare, we wud not hav 2 luv U lIk we do, not hav 2 foLow U on Instagram
foLow U om, let ourselves in2 yor basement w d key code texted 2 d cad, hu won’t b comin, won’t eva b comin anywhere eva agen
W8 2 presnt U w aL her hair n 1 lng yeLo string az a token of our tragic luv
Cuddles are Drying up Like the Sun in a Data Lake
Sun is such a hard word, like a boiled sweet
in one of those round travel sweet tins
that nobody wants unless they’re sick,
those citrus colours: lemon, lime and orange
that even without tasting make your mouth water
to counter the churn in your stomach.
Sun is such a hard word, with its ‘s’ and ‘n’
that could have an ‘o’ or an ‘i’ slotted between
for that Donnian pun or a postlapsarian chime
making it harder to give birth to or acknowledge,
spat out in a sibilant spray of spittle
ending in bright, shining negation.
Sun is such a hard word, once part of Microsystems
swallowed by Oracle, its SPARC processor in LEON
designed for space use, a fully open-source
implementation that neither you nor I
can understand, the most likely meaning:
cuddles are drying up like the sun in a data lake.
Ladybird
Every autumn I forget they do this,
until they do –
hard-faced carapaces,
little mechanical legs
across my bedroom ceiling
insinuating into warm gaps,
congregating under cornices,
black-eyed blotches staring me down.
Ladybird, ladybird fly away home
Your house is on fire, and your children are gone
Occasionally, a maverick, lured by the mellow glow
of the bedside light, will lift its elytra,
like the doors on a Lamborghini
and fly towards my open mouth.
Ladybird, lazy bird fly out of bed
Your home is infested …
but I shrink back from scooping its crunchiness
into tissue, messing
with its reflex bleeding, yellow toxins oozing
out of its exoskeleton.
All except one and that’s little Ann
(The receptionist had a tattoo on her arm.
In its freckled baby belly, Always in my heart)
For she crept under the frying pan
For she crept under the counterpane
Aphid Reproduction as Unpunctuated White Noise
.
a full stop is an aphid not a comma nor an embryo
an aphid is a full stop is a nymph not a womb holding
a comma nor a question mark asks nothing of a slash
or a backslash bulges with parentheses bears
afterthought after afterthought as a full stop
parthenogenetic filled with full stops without
stopping without comma without pausing full stop
after full stop never comma not a comma until
all the space is taken with full stop upon full stop
not a comma and a full stop develops wings flies off
!
an exclamation mark is an aphid on the wing not a
full stop not a comma nor an embryo an aphid is
an exclamation mark not a womb holding a comma
nor a question mark asks nothing of a slash or a
backslash bulges with parentheses bears afterthought
after afterthought as a full stop parthenogenetic
not an exclamation mark not a comma but a full stop
filled with exclamation marks filled with full stops
bears exclamation marks filled with full stops
until summer heat has happened and love is in the air
.
an aphid is a male on the wing not a full stop
is an exclamation mark and an aphid is a female
on the wing not a full stop is an exclamation mark
gives birth to a full stop without wings mates
with an exclamation mark and lays a full stop
a full stop is an egg not an aphid but an egg
and the egg it is dormant is a full stop not a pause
not a comma nor an embryo but a full stop in the winter
without wings an egg is a full stop until spring
and it hatches a full stop is an aphid not a full stop
ANDREW LATIMER
Most, if not all, of the poems included here were written whilst working in a supermarket bakery. The routine – the early starts, followed by equally early finishes – was conducive to writing poetry. In particular, the twelve- and fourteen-line, rhetorical short poem. This sonnetish poem, with its volta acting as dynamo – propelling and organising – makes its material memorable just long enough until it can be scribbled down – during a lunch break or stolen toilet stop.
Here are just eight examples. Their settings range between tenth-century Japan, early twentieth-century Antarctica, paper-thin medieval backdrops and Melanesian cannibal tribes. There are homages to Andrew Marvell, Marriane Moore, Bink Noll, as well as a chorus of anonymous Latin and medieval writers.
The Poet in the Garden
The poet in the garden counts the shoots
like syllables, the vegetable language
slowly forms. Sibyl in a ba
mboo cage
contorts the meaning in the scattered fruits.
Every thought is an attack on nothing,
a forage for the hedgerow deity.
Words abound but do not bite their meaning;
the blue tit waits, prepared for longer play.
Then memory, like a hard rime, returns,
says go in fear of the organic form.
The garden disappears inside the worm
and the poet, spat out, is forced to leave.
Parts of the feast remain – tuber and blooms.
Thoughts into words harden – tight little tombs.
from Scott’s Journals
Saturday; at Camp, I scattered some oats.
Weary Willy has kept the course so far
and the ponies seem to be strong. The clouds
are thin and rolling in Antarctic pink.
Saw James Pigg, Michael and Snatcher up ahead
and we drew up within an hour to rest.