DAVID McCLEAN

trees, sun, fishes

there are lakes with steely surfaces

under them dart small swift fish precipitous

intent upon the piscine –

if i were there, if i went out,

surely i could drown in fishy confusion;

the morning sun smiles now docile behind the curtains

slyly belying her massive power

but proudly life-giving –

if i were there, if i went out,

surely i could worship the essence of the solar;

trees stretch enamoured to that same loving sun

humming vegetable intensity under their drowsy contentment

these trees i dream of

if i were there, if i went out,

surely dreams could dance in the glorious arboreous;

but curtains define a secure locus of containment

luscious security exquisitely invisible –

trees, sun, fishes

if they were here, if they came in,

surely they would expose me to dangerous invasion;

so i let them go, naked in their essential natures -

the lesser of two evils, i'm really not complaining.

some little girl, dead in france, 1348

we traced the minutes entrained between each passing second written large across the unsmiling face of night, a heaven smaller than the space between the smallest god's eyebrows, and you said "why don't we steal an hour from some particular thursday in 1974? some memory, some sorrow, some joy, something from your registered life?" i said that sorry, hours fell across the tracks of esurient oblivion like the tears of a child forgotten years ago and not recorded in history's pages, the child not even honoured with a footnote, you know, the little girl who had some disease in 1348 in france and at this point in his listeningly reading the theodicising theologian embarrassed swallowed his gulp of calmly brandy and stroked the cigar he used to compensate his lost erection, the one he misplaced somewhere between Aquinas' pages, his disgrace, his poor unlovable face. and you remained the reason, the stalwart stanchion that is my last bulwark in the face of that one last good night, the one that that little girl presumably, and she probably existed, slid into unashamed and innocent as the angel that she unfortunately never became, died just like that so softly between an ave maria and a pained cough and general poor hygiene, all life's dismal despite. and despite the failure of theodicy that dog, that nobodaddy, that god, is unassailable in his irreproachable nonentity. no one to blame for god is not; and that little girl's so young, so untimely, dying and lying somewhere unloved, forgotten, is all the rage and pain and sorrow in the universe. and all that matters now to prepare for is that one day you and i shall look one another in the unwinking eye and remember her forever.

* * *

JAMES MIDGLEY

Bears

The machines of man? As opposed to what,
the machines of bears? Watch out for redundancy.

They've been multiplying, you know,
blooming to enormous overcoats
in gloomy forest spaces.

Even the occasional panda or polar bear
joins them to hymn If you go
down to the woods today. But the trees
can't hold them forever: just yesterday
I found the milk and honey snuffled,
paw prints on the kitchen tiles, and under
the fridge the shadow buzzed with fur
or the memory of it. Soon enough
we will have to stop telling the kids
there's nothing in the closet.
Stay away from pits, especially
those roughly the size
of a bear's mouth. Stock up on traps,
perhaps a blunderbuss or two.
All this hardly needs saying.

Moving House

It's the way the candlebulbs gather
shadows at the top of the stairs,
black fabrics you put on like a coat
that's cold right through, a dead
relative’s. It's as if the house
sticks to you, shows you all
its spirits in one last
candid attempt:
                          the armchair's emptiness,
the bedroom door that cools at night
and opens itself, the image
of your face in a hundred surfaces.
 
The field-horses trickle over
the horizon. You have left
a part of yourself swimming in the trees
among swifts and sparrows that come
and go without end, with the rat
whose eyes flashed once in headlights
and vanished down the hole of your head –
which is now some other head you soon forget.

* * *

TREVOR PRICE

It’s Random

Ayeshia tells me all about her trip to the arctic

While the train rattles behind untidy back yards.

"The way the ice shears off is fantastic."

What I see are blank playing cards

Falling onto baize tables, then the lawns

Passing by, scattered over by little toys

As multi-coloured as sweets. She follows my gaze, yawns.

"Of all the things, you know, that mankind destroys

"The ice caps are definitely the ones to see."

I smile. "Last week I travelled to my home town . . . "

There the loitering, eerie monkey-puzzle tree,

And the four-faced clock tower of sandstone

That a thousand years will wash away,

Making the faces clatter like tarnished coins.

"Oh yes?" She muses, "Maybe I’ll go back, one day,

". . . the past is broke . . . but I’ll ignore the joins.

"Why not? I have no stake in the future,

"Barring some un-fucking-believable medical advance. "

Her grin is a sly, glistening wink of denture.

No, it’s not much to ask – one last second chance.

* * *

MARK FARRELL

Ptry

Thr nc ws ths pr pt

wh hd n ld brkn typ-wrtr

tht ddn’t typ ny vwls whtsvr…

S, nbdy ndrstd hs pms,

vn whn h wld nly typ

smpl wrds dwn th pg, wrds lk:

LV

LV

LV

LV…

BTY

BTY

BTY BTY…

N.

N gd.

Nbdy ndrstd.

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