What comes to mind in Ireland What is black? An absence of light, the cassocks of parish priests, dark peat in an Irish bog. What is brown? A leather belt, decaying plants, veins of iron in stones, the layered bark of a log. What is grey? Lowering clouds, skies threatening rain over windswept water, the … Read more
Vitruvian Woman For Laura A Poem for Halloween Svelte limbs, aquiline and flow, her enjambment; The whole pelvic girdle hypnotically balances, Famously compared to a serpent which dances, And which has all full-blooded heterosexual males entranced…! And, there you have it! The Feminists declare, “No more male gazing here!” Where are we? How did … Read more
Maldon days hēt þā hyssa hwæne hors forlǣtan, feorr āfȳsan, and forð gangan, hicgan tō handum, and tō hige gōdum. The Battle of Maldon (991 AD) Galvanized into action, my companion horses neighed as they galloped to the woods, riderless and rudderless. I turned back to my liege lord, reluctant to retreat, … Read more
Discovery Discovery are coloured dark deep red. I heard one falling as I brushed the tree — a startled bird troubling bushy leaves — but with more plummet, accelerated power, crimson sinker parting waves of green, descending progeny, seeds sheathed in a cream flesh, webs of genes cradling what could be, bound for the food … Read more
And Me Naked for you, beneath some moon somewhere, which sounds like an ending, unless you begin with it. White as a page, as a unicorn’s horn, some skin—all of mine. So stare down—star-down is how I want to lay with you. Come further up. Go further in. Night is falling with us. Night, the … Read more
No animals died Our research on toads and carabids considered predator and prey. Japanese toads and bombardier beetles were ‘introduced’, let’s say. The relationships were explosive – but complied with current laws. We intend to show you footage. Please, hold your applause. Our methodology? Each beetle placed in tongue’s reach of a toad. Each swallowed. … Read more
Vincent in Hiroshima “A work of art is a corner of creation viewed through a temperament.”—Emile Zola I. Daubigny’s Garden, a late masterpiece of Vincent van Gogh, painted in July 1890 (the same month he died), now hangs in Hiroshima. Talk about ghosts of the blast. Beauty clings to Horror, and still clings, even when … Read more
Oblique Landscape JP Jacobsen, I read your poem of a boundless heath with mossy stones where you were born and where you returned with the tungsind poet that ‘died the death, the difficult death.’ Shadowgraph naturalist, translator of Darwin enduring sufferer of tuberculosis who loved six enraged steadfast women for the poet to tune the mood to … Read more
Lovely Dead If I were to let you go who would I show this garden to; who would be there to tell me ‘no’ it’s not enough to say it’s blue in June, when echiums greet the bees (just as later they give finches seeds) and turns yellow in summer sun, burns to red with … Read more
_ Where beckons the quiver…? Are there no spirits moving in the air _ ruling the region between earth and sky ? And do you shine from the sky _ goddess in decay, _ as respite from the spit of day ? For this world could not hold you ? Whose arm twitches … Read more