Poems

Witness Marks

Accompaniment to Shannon Garden Smith and Emily Smit Dicks exhibition at 8-11 Gallery

Listening to the faint sounds of a couple settling down for the night

She was clearly cut from the same cloth as me

She a poet 

And I a writer of fiction 

She makes two from one and one 

And together they were sleek moon-like light 

Feelings are condemning 

A sensational grip of whole body words

Now and then there was a low humm

And I could not, with my hand on my heart, say no

What they say 

Can only be said as a result of having failed

Youth culture blushes on behalf of its country 

Still, they believe each ending is a site of transformation

And like a diary they are open to the future

Hadn't there been something open about them?

(It’s not possible to identify every tiny fluctuation of the soul)

Isn’t that what they make their living from?

Share the moment with me here and now

That was their only offer

At the table, the sisters wear plastic scraps of light 

Lifting the green from its leaves

It's absence they long for 

Through the last quarter of the half full moon

Returning to the inner of the outside

There there there

It has to be there 

Birthplace

In the collection “Small Obstructions”, 2017

I think it’s a cave in reverse

If I put a finger in its perfect circle dark secretive infinite

I could pull out its interior inside out outside in

I shift my weight to the right foot and raise my left

Knee bent at ninety I use my left arm and pull my left thigh away from my body

Now we’re opening to opening and I can balance

In contemplation

Slowly I return my leg to centre and foot by foot

Lowering knees and toes together I press my forehead To the hole

a gentle sucking on a down covered arm

I press down in response and can feel it smile Just a little pressure

The top of my head through the earth

Then quickly without warning over my nose and clog up my ears

Earth Turtleneck

I move in

Make myself comfortable

Round out small cavities in the irregularity of it all Soft and firm from years of burnishing

It low glows and the gods can see in

Caramel carnelian coral and cinnamon

Soon I no longer miss the light so fickle in its placement

The warmth of darkness thick and consistent

One day is not like the rest

There is a subtle shift and I flirt my toes with the foreign wind

I circle my ankle and swarms of mud forms around my foot

Up my leg and under the softest part of my thigh

I chew the dark marl that is icing my mouth and caking my lashes

Returned from where I last came I lay in solemnity and body bliss

Re-skinned and obscure I tap my chin and chant

I am a cave in reverse

New Moon

 There were cycles of earthly time when my mother arrived home from work,

  And didn’t come inside

 Instead, ferrying her petite frame across the frozen patch of land we called Yard,

  She would excavate a fluffy foot off the top with a joyful plastic Dredge,

  Creating a human-width, protective trench between her car and me,

  Me watching culpable from behind our thick weatherproofed Door

 Far, in the softest part of my mind and in equal kilometers away,

  She creates bridges still, and I lie guilty puppy lazy in comfort

 There’s not a part of me that’s not full up in her, by her,

  And the evening Roots of her hair

  I can see, in my own uncertain form, glassy water particles from winters past,

Beginning to thaw

Just as she sees her own mothers’ coursing through her

Generous Face, feeling Eyes, unassuming Wrists, considerate Thighs

   May I sponge up the vestiges of gentlewomen against Atrophy‘s arid touch,

    to keep myself from Independence

   May I never fully close grief‘s Door, keeping suffering stuffed above my Larnax

    where it can serve in memorandum

   May I carry, her, this, us, she, with me

    until we can all go Home again

 Life is nothing but a minute of everything intense and forgotten and hopeful,

 in places that are always snowing