magma announcement list longlisted poems 0327€¦ · in+flight+ mick&delap& &...
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‘felicitous blending of figure and landscape’
David Borrott
Two youths are fighting on the high street. One wears a daub of blood on his white shirt, the other’s fists are tight as apples; a clench of excitement runs through the watching people, their faces like a row of broken plates. Dummies in the glass expand the crowd – ‘Next’ says the shop sign. On the stone plinth of the town centre monument, a woman with XXXL breasts is smoking. She rests earthmotherly on the steps. Smoke rises from her hand and her nostrils, stroking the air with its grey curls. Its filaments reach to the lowest green of a sycamore. Her overblown curves temper the harsh lines of the war memorial. A man is pissing down an alley. It is night and a soft untroublesome rain persists. Street lights reflect in the rancid puddles, touches of orange amongst the grey and brown. His fawn jacket is darker at the shoulders, his half-‐cocked trousers are shadowy, vague. It is almost as if he hovered there on the jet of his stream.
Syzygy Holly Corfield Carr
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
Alfred Tennyson, ‘Kraken’
a crush of brine antiquely froth and benthic wash with the stink and sudden sight of that rot wet rope of red carrier bags puckering up at spring tide
The Toppled Dictator Is Prepared For Burial Michael Conley
The boy at the mouth of the tent is not yet fourteen, has never met his Great-‐ Uncle, but the holy men insisted: there are no sons left. Pale flesh, set like poached fish, top lip still snarled over yellow teeth. He counts five bullet holes, exits for so much evaporated god. He doesn’t know where to start, whether he is supposed to cry. The two guards are watching him. Outside: the people and their slogans, the prattle of an ancient generator. He picks up the bucket and sponge, recalls the servants, before everything, soaping his father’s car shirtless in the afternoon heat.
In Flight
Mick Delap
From before dawn till well after dark, the jets arrive; arrive and depart, labouring heavily, tearing the skies apart around your head. Only with midnight is there pause -‐ and a young wind comes prowling through the tree tops; out of a copse, the haunt of an owl; surf grumbles, distantly. Enough quiet to strain again to catch the movement of a star. In town, traffic grumbles faintly, the last tube taps a rail; a passing siren wails itself into the next precinct. And through a soup of light, the same star gamely spangles. About now, most still nights, wherever it is you’re gazing from, high overhead an older aircraft drones through your consciousness, so quiet, so high, its level propeller hum hangs behind it, the noise an unseen falling star might make, gone before it had ever really come. But it’s with you now -‐ and all that is missing from your long life stirs, as this gentle blade peels back the firmament, shows the unseen -‐ and touches you. Loss awakens, absence gathers, time stops; for a heartbeat, almost reverses itself. Before the noise of engines fades. And pulls you after in its fading wake.
The Importance of Calligraphy in 10th Century Japan Patrick Early
In Heian, a great lady was so taken with a suitor’s calligraphy that her heart was stricken. She declared that through the noble lattice-‐work of his epigraphy, she could see into his soul and even when his pen-‐strokes strayed and became quite inscrutable, said she would love him all the more for showing himself fallible.
An Opportunity to Speak German
Sarah Fisher
Finding himself in Orkney without much to do, my father taught himself German. It would have turned out useful if Hitler had invaded, which at the time seemed very likely. Finding himself in Dresden at the end of the war, he had the chance at last to try it out; but no-‐one spoke to him, he did not know the words for “We’ve come to mop things up.”
Folding a Sheet with my Mother Sarah Fisher
She watched me lower the drying rack, to grasp the crackling sheet. Pushing back her chair, she got up and took an end; “Come on,” she said, “It’s easier with two.” Corner to corner we tugged it, fold to fold we tamed it. Coming towards me she lifted two fingers to take it, smiling as if she had taught me something, and caught me unawares. Instead, I firmly grasped it, taking the soft sheet, to deny her the pleasure of showing me how to do it.
Sixty
Kerry Hardie
Everyone is slowly going home. The shadow of the pine lies stretched and sprawled across the trodden sands. The water-‐line creeps close. I am watching my husband grow old— the stoop in the lines of his bones, the hesitant note in his gait, where once there was ease and strut. This mirror his form holds to mine is not how I want things to be. It cancels the contract of life, it stifles our birth-‐howl with clay. But everyone is slowly going home. The shadow of the pine lies stretched and sprawled across the trodden sands. The water-‐line creeps close.
Black Plastic Bag
Mehmet Izbudak
With it, you usually wore a claret tie and blue shirt. I folded the jacket into a shape that would slot precisely into the gap in the black bin bag. Your maroon brogues heel to sole fit neatly into the remaining space. The black bag is tied tightly and is lifted to check that it isn’t too heavy. I remember as we sat over a meal – my nineteenth summer – and you said that a good poem like any good work of art, is another way of seeing, always adding something to one’s life however many times you read it. That’s why the poem you read is never the same. I carried the black plastic bag to the front door, placed it carefully to the left of the steps, stood silently over it. It was a little like a burial at sea.
Tree Surgeons
Brian Johnstone
They range amongst the upper limbs like primates encumbered with care, find parts of trees we'd recognise as human gestures on the level, pass rope through crooks of elbows, bends of knees, and anchor on to laterals that bear the strain, the dead weight of the saw to make their surgery complete. Down here, we're squinting at the sun and, grounded by our lack of skill, point out the deft incisions we require to lighten up our lives. They make it so, disguise it in the cut and pay down branches, green and dying, each a stretcher's girth, a sleeper's weight.
Thoughts in a Baker Street Café
(Set down for Q)
William Oxley
I.
Sun rose bright in a blue-‐white sky Morning parcelled between buildings: The café found was quite lively Whilst I, to say the least, was sluggish – My mind in line for a sleep or a pension. But slowly themes formed in subtle fashion: (Thinking is a thing most people ration) Fragments came, images, symbols too – Old thoughts and new walked in my brain. II There was Q and our discussion on the train The problem of directionless youth – How our mutual friend sought experience, Found women, drink, but not truth. Images of fields cattle-‐dotted recurred, flashed Past the café window now. Crammed With thought and talk and activity Had been that Yorkshire weekend: And now in a formless marvellous way It was coming back, welling up and mingling With this new day in the city: on my own I found the train and café were one. Q’s drink and beard and appreciative eye For breast and waist and wholesome thigh, For the serious animated thought – His argument that art cannot be taught And they were fool to build art schools When pubs and girls were quite enough. III. What is past is all smell and image. In coffee, cuisine and people’s conversation A café (or snack bar) fixes an age: As does that clearing house of life, a railway station.
Over coffee at Kings Cross we’d talked of X Our friend whose attitude dirtied sex But at Leeds we talked with X Himself who discoursed on others’ abuse of sex: And Q and I had been floored by the irony. IV. Now shoppers pack Baker Street like wheat So I do not go out. Most are ruled by desire and necessity Whereas I more by memory Thought desire enters it too. The fascination of people fulfills a poet’s need And book are a way of remembering. But thinking of you Q, now – How you emphasized experience – I stare from this café window At a slow old man, A mad motorists and the sudden loveliness of woman – Wondering how your ‘experience’ Will stand up to transcience.
Games the Dead Play
Colin Pink
The dead hide behind tombstones shy about the pallor of their bones. They want to jump out and say hello but are scared of swallowing your sorrow. On their birthday they blow out other people’s candles and watch darkness descend from all angles. They like to slide into your mind uninvited and relish the way your mood gets blighted. The dead like to be elusive and test who among us remembers them best. They look forward to the occasional visit even from people whose purpose is illicit. On their death day a party is started but strictly only the dead are invited.
Canzone: Naming the Boat
Breda Wall Ryan
In his dream the woman is hazy robin’s-‐egg blue, almost transparent, hovering over the river, not speaking, leaving him cold as winter and blue. He’s stirring paint-‐dregs together, naming the blues: rainwashed, midnight, salmon-‐back, tidal water. On the radio Lady Sings the Blues, the singer’s voice the precise cloudwater blue his spirit woman wants him to paint her name on the bow of the boat he has never named, knowing a named boat takes a human soul, blue as water, the soul of one who has gone in the river. The river is calling his lover to go to her drowning, its sleepless trickle whispers, Go! in her ear all the unbearable midnight blue hours, waterwords tricking her. It’s time to go night-‐fishing. Can he know, yet not know she’ll go out of her head while he’s out on the river, sifting water through nets where wild salmon go contra flow? The toss of a dream-‐coin decides: go. He leaves the woman who is winter water, the long bones under her skin thinning to water. He turns from her grey illegible already-‐gone-‐ away eyes. He dreams footsteps, calls her name, hears only a patter of raindrops naming each leaf: hazel, birch, alder, ash, names shivery as light on water. He goes where the watersong calls, this man named before birth for a river, his name more than a name. Clear as dragonfly blue wings spell summer he hears their names in the pitter of rain on water, the naming-‐ spell he heard the first day he sat, feet in the river next to his lover’s. Leaves dream-‐fall on the river, the quicken is dropping its berries, the name-‐ spell is turning the flow of Boyne Water. And Shannon, a woman essential as water, is fading, dissolving like water-‐ logged paper, bleeding loops of her name into factory runoff — water the scientists claim is sweet water, pure as the rain that falls where clouds go over the Gulf Stream. The dreamer sees red water-‐ spiderlings hatch from the eggs of a water-‐
hen. The legs of the patient blue heron are scald-‐marked and eaten. Blue tinges the morning mist shrouding the water; night-‐fog like mourning-‐crepe drapes over the river; crows dive from the trees and swim in the river, all omens that something’s awry with the river that feeds the town reservoir. Craving water, the woman drains glass after glass of the river that leaches her spirit, feeling the river dissolving the strength in her name, scarring her bones with a rune for lost river. The water-‐fowl, sealing her fate, leave the river, arrowing its banks with claw-‐marks that tell her go to the drowning. The dreaming man sees her go glassy-‐eyed, gauzy as vapour, sees the river possess her, flow into her faded blue veins, turning their cobwebby map river-‐blue. Shannon Lady Sings the Blues in cloudwater blue on the bow of a boat filled with river-‐ smooth boulders, lying low in the water up to the lines of her name, the naming spelling a soul into the boat, letting her go.
Jan Palach and Jan Zajic Memorial, Vaclav Square, 2000. Barry Tempest
The photographs and plaque do not impose, but people pause in August rain by the bright flowers, by the small, neat words, ordinary people going to work, shopping, just passing. It was a long time ago: the nose-‐tensing stench of petrol, the whoosh of struck matches on the voluntary pyres, the burst of flame that might light up a rainy day. News was TV distant: tanks clanking in, or saffron burning monks in Viet Nam. I made then a kind of date; and now I’m standing, here, at a loss, by Vaclav’s horse in the summer rain, watching people pass and gather drizzle drop from the summer leaves. The tanks have gone; a Tesco’s store is round the corner. Was that the future you saw through the screen of flame? You would have been in your fifties now, like me. But look how ordinary people pause in their day, hatless in the rain, or lower a wet umbrella and, for a moment still – like me – suspend their lives for a breath: your fierce summer petals glow, like flames through the drifting rain.
Annie Slack Nicola Timmis
Head-‐scarved and coated, Annie Slack clatters in her too high heels, past the Crem, where she blesses ‘Our-‐Frank’, and thanks God only for her own life. For the Mecca at the end of the week, and for the low-‐lit room, where you can’t tell mutton from lamb in here, love; and no-‐one gives a shit about sin. At Park Hill, Annie pulls a fag from her pocket, lights it, keeps walking. Click-‐clack, click-‐clack, past the chip-‐shop, past the bread-‐shop, past the knocking-‐shop where, thank-‐fuck, she never worked. Click-‐clack, past the back of the flats where girls still now are flat on their backs, with their own ‘Our Frank’, whose Friday-‐night fists are always sorry in the morning, but the flat-‐backed girls always sorrier. On and on Annie Slack echoes: click-‐clack, click-‐clack, back back to her fag-‐gravelled mother with her gin-‐slapped cheeks, back to her tripe-‐bellied dad with his slack-‐slipper face. Back and back and back echoes Annie Slack.
The Pyramid
Dennis Tomlinson
Above the slanting glass pale February sky. Pigeons wheel in the light. Before we roll below I glance into the pit – flocks of tourists scurry. Proudly you walk away into the crowd, your hair burning in the darkness.
My Mother’s Sleep is Deep
Margaret Wilmot
My mother’s sleep is deep as drifts of snow. Snow-‐white the moon which plays with rays like fingers, smoothes and lingers on her white sheet. The slow touch and flow is magic, stirring earth from night towards day, from sleep to life. A tide sheering, soaking. Currents below stroke, tug. Atoms disunite in dark earth floating free; grains that sleep unseen conjoin. My mother’s bones are green blades rising with the light. They will be snowdrops soon, snow-‐green.
Breconshire Oak Wood
Dilys Wood
What else, where else, what better place to meet than where you know he’ll be, just up the road from the road-‐side smash. A refuge from the heat – so much he’s changed and now he loves the shade and ambles past you, in and out of shadow, his hand half-‐raised as he’s forced to greet you his own father; amused to be a figment of Dad’s imagination. So much he’s changed! He’s dead now and quite changed. That early bent towards mathematics gone; but still he’s ranged with thinking people, contemplative blokes, who like the company of Druid oaks – the way the homely, blunt shape of each leaf frets out August sun (… month he was killed…) and there’s a dark floor where ivy sinks its teeth, its neat white teeth, in the soft loose mould; a scholar-‐tramp he bends and pulls it out aiming to wind the strands around a hat like some out-‐dated poem’s shepherd-‐lad? But only idly binds a tough-‐stemmed wreath and hangs it on a branch that’s grey and sad, the antlers of an oak that caught it’s death before he was born; has now grown silver with ten times more than his summers and winters. But in your thoughts you keep the boy alive. You make him visit earth, “Oh, drop it, Dad!” He’s irked by pleadings, but he will arrive, a sulky Ariel who thinks you mad, “Have you no life, no ambition? You’re not old!” You want to hug him, bring him from the cold Beneath that heavy, pretentious stone, whose fine wording cost such wrenching pain; you dig him up, your love re-‐sets each bone, the angle of his look; his smile lives again, grudging and rueful as it always seemed as if his luck was something you both dreamed and knew it would end in repeated “Bye!” “Goodbye, you fool, it’s shadow that you see” – the sun, green in this shade, blue sky so malaprop to feelings that agree
in hopeless hurt. “You didn't want to die?” “I didn’t want to die, Dad. Now let me be.”
Home Page
Howard Wright
Sunrise is brushed fire and magpies scavenge the cut grass. Night stands in pools and puddles around the house, and shrapnel cools on the bedside table. Every morning is revenge. * She pierces the foil cap with the needle and draws up ink. The vein in her arm is taut. She thinks of blood touring all the districts of her flesh and what it visits there. * He builds a shrine to himself. He fills it with daddy-‐long-‐legs and moths, those caught on curtains he gently kills and with a sable brush paints across their nothing-‐wings his smile. * The cat’s whiskers twitch out over the river’s fording-‐stones of algae. Sunlight slithers along the filaments, rods and webs, to drop like water, like honey, on the float, the bait and prey. * His lover has the tongue of an iris. Her brains are hydrangea. The German stockings are held up By camellias and purple ivy, her closed eyes Are pissholes becoming black roses. * She lies awake, dreaming. The shooting gallery of businessmen. It’s a rule: the smaller the phone the louder the voice. She won’t trim her fingernails, and her laugh has a life of its own, a public face. * Pulling, hawking, the bag of compressed peat, lightweight, but clunky and awkward at the same time, to slash it with a spade, punch through, exploding the guts on the cursed soil.
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