Certain of these poems have been published previously, usually in different versions, in the following journals whose editors I gratefully acknowledge:
Blackbox Manifold, Botch, Chicago Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Hambone, PN Review, Poetry, Verge, Verse Version (with Chinese translations by Zhao Gu),
The Wolf, #NewWriting and in the anthology Atlantic Drift edited by James Byrne and Robert Sheppard (Arc Publications and Edge Hill University Press 2017). Self Defeated was published as a broadside by Constitutional Information, Sheffield, 2014. My thanks to Sam Ladkin and Sara Crangle. I thank Srikanth Chicu Reddy for his encouragement and his unmatchable collegiality. Jessica Stockholder, Patrick Chamberlain, Judith Farquahar and James Hevia have done much to make Chicago my other home. Thank you to the National Humanities Center for hospitality in 201718, and to Jo McDonagh and Colin Jones for Poets Road.
And home is where Maudie is.
Contents
Elder blossom with its stench, strict reek of geraniums, fair are the insouciant drapes behind which creatures scoot. Lightning anneals its cleft air, there can be no ambiguity; wine is tapped from blossom, fecund sun must cast light. Be as the unread blood insists, as light-sensitive cells, rents in the rose scent tagged by twitching skirmishers. Lip-scanners, touch parsers, catalogue the sunshines mottle; deer hid in the complex, fragrant streaks, act petrified, being cognisant, nerved to bolt their patchwork awning, airs now fitful cries, scarcely shades the panicky creatures. Piece them out.
A loaded runic yearns to kill, and its dire stalking, night-time creeps of purpose scope and dissect.
Squint chisel pares to the quick, blocks of music in the ear stay inert until times rush from bloated gutters, lash against storm windows, slew through veined clerestories, sheets of water, living torrents oer-brim the cistern are you composed still, are you hungry still at your plate, do you select an automatic flower from its braced stalk, dreamer whose fluidity shifts the block of Lyonesse? Beyond its portals lies a forked infarct once was twitching, latterly a table laid with tables where a head betimes lay, trig points punctuate its slope aspect, fields of soft xs wont be pledged or disavowed, suppliance has at it, heads nod and bury in that erst fluting marsh, serrated beaks prod the verges drying bated sense harsh scour, last efforts brace palings kissing numbers open each as Jesses rod fluoresces over its parallels. Rails stretch, planks climb, bars curl at access points. Number-franked fleeces spoil pegged out stiff as a board. May domains a dreamer spills shawl earth with spheres, melt solids, drench accord.
Where did the despoiled invest time clung to, to resettle haunt workings? Squatters riddle at the grate, disfiguring its chrome with hurried embers, cumulus in puffs of palest blue is forcing through sectors, white stone is seething, smooth white stone is seething as a circular saw bites, iconoclasts trim an alabaster nimbus, dismantle.
What of the silica cues forwarding to their devices, fingers catch on winking stars what of graphite grass square or storms of bells crossing slate and clay tablets, aggressive trees and virulent entabled mosses? Now traffic lights at named intersections take aim, Do Not Enter boxes fill with caustic, lenses zoom, the safe vacuities of recall drift in stone cisterns imageless and drained, rue stains the borders dreamt touch suffices to corroborate; the bled will take their time literally, express the juice from marrowbones, papyri, lathering over unburied names.
Dissolve a stain impress a tadpole grid prevent belligerent frogs from slithering foam ladders, clench hypothesis of day or fibre glass Parthenon, slot stone by stone to face a blue imperative faade, held back by a fretful lightweight summer force, a failing state, clapperboard soon trounced in dis array to fault that perpending Hebrew, Aramaic star, its earth-lit psalmody first greeted them in pause halfway, where each explores his body lit on a target screen, a selfie in a failing state articulates through its positions, army veterans click heels, occupy the leaden bearing set and biocast, die cast in miniature, a clatter from the medium now more specified investigated life-forms, spasms of a green too eventful and a red back to base, a rucked cloud drops hollow rounds on a signaller squats low, who wriggles into mud, braids lines that click and pop, fendillates before the wires, death on his crawl board, cellulose ladders roll in front of cloud and clod. Menhirs grow exacerbated shadows thrown across the barbed wire like pads of ticking I swarm over.
Fracturing while desert wind is veering sand in wadded streams, an ever motive idols craquelure moves to speak: Lava bulges, rock waves, sands shrill deliverance, skirl of seed strews a swept floor, bends oaken stands. Your model God may fix his steroid face on blank despondency, whitewashed Eden and the pews levelled, noble truths smash images smitten into unreflective marvellous lofty, struck eyes blanked girls amid their downtown valediction, glaze a solstice hollowed for its rubble, cratering the siren murk, spawning into gaped pent vocatives loofa car, full-page sheds and shacks, roofed slalom custody behind-the-scenes sandstone brows bullets furrow, hew to horizontal rungs, vapour tray wasps and dayflies get sorted, rack of heaven, brilliant contrails marking up the blue, their payloads crash down on cracked cheeks, stretch to this, stretch to children huddled in such famished state goaded over canted splurge of chalk towards their image blank-eyed.
Invite the details, detail found missing, give more details, bunched flies combed apart, toil in furrows hunched under crows avidity spilling out on space, for space has enticed them, no bread to eat or clean water, fragile backs braced against the curve of rarefaction lever blocks and ties of marble or jarrah, memorialise or making tracks bruise the open source so as then gush, thus will a corporate raider keep his promise, thus will he certify larders of stiff worms, and at a v bidirectional but snapping-to on the elusivest charge, this way or that laying out in dot dot dot the pleonastic offer yet more brought to the table free of regulation, snuff this haunted air, decrying air that cannot guide or train an eye that needs its sight lines or ear that wants air transposed: The pilgrims while diminished choose trekking over flat bright faces, clinging to the handholds, slopes of carrara slide them to a drop dizzy cant avoid the gaping gorge of a server keeps in its domain all detail, hutch of secret names.
Invite the details, detail found missing, give more details, bunched flies combed apart, toil in furrows hunched under crows avidity spilling out on space, for space has enticed them, no bread to eat or clean water, fragile backs braced against the curve of rarefaction lever blocks and ties of marble or jarrah, memorialise or making tracks bruise the open source so as then gush, thus will a corporate raider keep his promise, thus will he certify larders of stiff worms, and at a v bidirectional but snapping-to on the elusivest charge, this way or that laying out in dot dot dot the pleonastic offer yet more brought to the table free of regulation, snuff this haunted air, decrying air that cannot guide or train an eye that needs its sight lines or ear that wants air transposed: The pilgrims while diminished choose trekking over flat bright faces, clinging to the handholds, slopes of carrara slide them to a drop dizzy cant avoid the gaping gorge of a server keeps in its domain all detail, hutch of secret names.
