Celia, the Sea Does Not Remember You Waves are not waves But the convulsions of a body That has forgotten the bones it conceals. The sea a wound that refuses to close. Celia goes there because the sea soothes her. She goes there because the air cools her. She observes gannet and curlew As one watches The slow collapse of a star. A big black sea bird stands in the surf Like an officiating priest. Its eyes are two shells Filled with the residue of night. Around it, strands of t

A Ghost As If I am not your keeper O ghost who crouches At the grave of my father. The body is dead; it is in the shade. A pale figure with a sheet for a robe rises from the earth (His hair black as ravens' feet). With cold-clay fingers, He could quell the soul’s fire. As if. A seagull cries In the salted air Like a baby Calling for its parents. There is blood on the land, Blood in the rivers too. You are not what you appear To thi

A Strange Hatching Into Eden fly the winged elohim screeching like owls, scattering dark mist and whirling about, their wings flapping shadows over baffled beasts below. The first of the elohim selects an animal on two legs & calls it Adam. Into the brainstem a long needle of DNA is inserted. The second elohim draws out a rib from a gash in Adam’s side. From that rib a female of girlish proportions is fashioned & named Eve. Grinning like an ape,

A Dark Illumination Once again, we are here, as we are on this day every year, two hearts lit up with pain. And as day falls into night, a little candle illumines this dim corner where we half-appear. And every flicker, like every breath, is a discrete sensation of hurt, one after the other. It is always the same. Her sitting there, Me sitting here (still wearing yesterday’s shirt). Look at the light. How can a flame smaller than a baby’s fist,

Melville and the White Whale Shut up Here in This Caved Trunk of a Room, On the Massachusetts Side of a Loose-Fish Land We Call America — and Feeling All at Sea In a World That Is Mad and Wet All Over I Write down This, My Heathen Language. Making waves. Much INK OIL WAX SPERM BLOOD Spilled to find the White Whale — Whose mighty tail-flukes billow the sea’s shroud; whose peck-slaps flap and flood six hundred pages of Great American Prosody; whose massive genitalia rem

The Darkness of This House Making his advances in tall steps, Davie marks Suzie standing small at the kitchen sink. She drops something, holds still her breath. ‘No-one’s gonna listen to you, Suzie, and that’s a fact’. The ugly brown voice of a drunk scrapping for a fight. From him bad odours rise, smells of fish and river foam, tobacco and beer. He picks up a carver, puts it down. ‘So don’t even think about it’. It is evening, it is hot, and a dead carp’s eye looks up at Suz

Death of a House Sparrow Scraping his toes in the fine dirt, the handsome house sparrow lowered his whitish belly to the ground, deepening the depression of a crater arid from drought. Flapping dust under his wings, beak pressed to chest, he dry cleaned his colours in the earth, expressing in movement the joy and power of God’s nature. Perhaps it was a pain or a sorrow that made him stop still, every nerve in his body petrified to its tip. I stoo

Father O'Sinner Father O’Sinner is not his name (not quite), Though it should be and not O’Connor, Which was the name bestowed by his stepdad, Who drank and killed himself aged forty. Here he lies this foggy midnight on the cradle Of his drears and prayers. Faith does not Fructify; it is dirty. On a mattress Hard his rump Swells, bruises His core parts, the body revolts Amidst all this blasting and mildew. Life gone old and fat around the waist. A

The Blinded Samson (1912) by Lovis Corinth Samson 1 The LORD is a living dread whose absence in Shiloh is more potent than his presence. Notwithstanding the regenerative Spirit whose intimate impulse is felt by the inner man, no angelic return or godly descent precedes the rousing motions of body and temple torn joint by joint. No use for Delphic oracle or word from Jerusalem. 2 Absorbed by the moon, the sun gives up its light, the stars their sweetness, and the sky is d

A Jazz Trombone Extends a Metaphor, the Length of a Memory A jazz trombone extends a metaphor, the length of a memory. With a memory, my grandfather says, You got to hear its pitch, its tone & blow life into it, then you retract, Slide right on back to Winter ‘69 When the Big Band scene died or the 1956 Klan attack on Nat King Cole; More often it’s1930s Long Island NYC Where his father met his mother (my great-grandmother) & you’re right there on a corner in Bro

It Is so Sad / the Way Things End It is so sad the way things end like a when a plant dies and dies in a black corner and you’re done for. It is over like the end of summer. The green has dried up and the stalks refuse to dream. This is the death of light, I said, as if quotes were facts or neat sums on a blackboard. The world snaps shut, silence seeps in, lighter than air, colourless and tasteless like carbon monoxide. In here nothing moves except the shadows on the curt

The Family Way Eve lay down and trembled. Her belly grew fat like the moon. Her womb conspired murder. Cain was gloomy at heart. Abel and his animals inflamed passions on all sides. Cain looked up and the sky shivered grey. Sin flew out the door of heaven. It stuck in Cain’s gullet like Aaron’s rod. Cain slaughtered his brother like a goat. He trembled as wiped the gore on his father’s coat of skin, which still carried the aroma of grandfather God.

Still-Life Ask her what she thinks as she conceals her baby in fallen leaves and detritus. Still-born, still-life. All that waiting, all that love unanswered. So many clouds with dark underbellies.

Death on the Pennines To live this hour beneath a cold Pennines sun requires the dead hills to flow behind us. To see the mighty crow and not look back means the death of something strange. We twist and turn. Shadows drape over us – ugly cloaks of lies that suit nobody. We are mired in bloody hearts. The crow comes, picks at the pieces. I am that crow, that symbol of death. I am the one that turns over corpses and flies away.

Confronting the Dead So, descend the steep hill Slowly, go on Go past the lunch cart — Scolding tea, coffee Hotdogs, burgers Fried onions, ketchup — — Succulent dark odours — Smells so foody — Mingling With exhaust of traffic — That they foment in your gut A hunger you didn’t know you had. Go ahead, under The railway bridge, turn right, Allotments to your left — Carrots, beans, raspberries Basil, rosemary, parsley Marigolds,

The Wreck (Boxing Day Tsunami, 2004) For the victims of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami Pieces of boat float on the water. A cargo of hands and heads go unrecognised. Camera crews walk on eggshell lives, pick up threads of stories. But tomorrow the photographs will start to fade as the world continues to churn in its grave.

Zero and the Anti-Dollar Zero sat still with the anti-dollar in his scarred palms. The war had begun and the fear was flying through the air like blood. Zero felt the poison stir in his lungs. The television was growing fat with virulent statistics, hospitals and fire. He stared through the screen and imagined a V-sign projected on the far wall. The anti-dollar sweated in his hands: it made his veins thicken with potential. Zero painted on a mask with chalk; stocked up on fis

Under the World A frog descended eighty-six radical steps to the devil’s loch. There the heron brooded at the water’s edge and the reflection of shapely trees misted in the fly-specked underworld.