memoryhouse

Nothing before had seemed so potent
and self-contained –
surely the onion you chopped
whilst we made bolognese
was beautiful.

Its hung cloud of acid worked
in my nose
and throat
and eyes
as the knife bisected

like a maker of names
passing
between twins,
calling one half Perfect
the other also Perfect.

My body is in debate: This house believes
that love is an enviable fever…
Last night my chest was an office on fire.
My pillow hurt. I couldn’t save the documents.
Now it is day again. The room has furniture
and I have ins and outs.

Is that the knife-grinder, grinding his knives
outside the window, or the sound
of my heart cooling down?
If I were in a novel you’d travel three days
by horse and carriage to see me. If you were in a novel
I’d die somewhere in these middle chapters.

The man in the bathroom,
his words are waiting
the way pips are suspended in the throat of an apple.

He spits into the sink.
Who is this man. Where is this bathroom.
He throws something into the bin from a distance.

His heartbeat vibrates little waves through the bathwater.
He is an island, after all.
The sound of his blood in his ears is a fuzzy,
high-pitched sound.

A voice from the next room calls out
come here.
Whose voice is this.
What do they want from him.

There is a pain between his shoulder blades.
It is a central pain, where wings would sprout from.

When he closes his eyes
he is in a room of people in identical clothes
refusing to dissect cow hearts –
their purpleness, their unromantic shapes.

It is a hot, bright day
and the smell of blood fills the air, or seems to.

Underwater he is rehearsing
once again
the moment he will pour forth words, which will be arrows,
which lodge in the thigh of a princess,

who looks at them but doesn’t feel pain.
The brain tells the body a lie. The brain
tells the eyes a lie.

The heart continues to beat
after it is removed from the body
like a mouth failing over and over again to find words.

(After R Perry)

How many poems sleep in dictionaries
buried like needles in hay
How many poets not yet born
rolled in tight webs of confusion
How many tender confessions there
How many small unkindnesses
How many games

And what unexplored
uninhabited
deserts of silences

(after Anna Kamieńska)

I have a soft roll on my desk
which two or three times
I’ve squeezed very gently
when no one is looking
butter
sprinkle of salt
soup
dream
the price of gold is falling
I can’t see behind me out the window
but the reflection
on the floor suggests
intermittent sun
tomorrow
I will sit on the museum steps
and read
last week
a pigeon actually flew into my chest
an avocado on my desk
is playing dead and prehistoric
another politician
has behaved terribly
later
I will take an online personality test
and do better
turns out the sky is falling down
in fat pieces
later
I will be caught in a vicious cycle
of removing strawberry pips from my teeth
with strawberries
later
moving through the rain reading the texts from a person
who is the person I fell in love with
I will be electric in the world

The party I skipped,
so we never met,
the ballets we saw alone,
years in which we swam
over and under

never breaking surface,
slippy with youth, one kiss
an island between two deeps,
the birds wheeling, a fish leaping,
there, in the Before.