Myra Connell - Two Poems

Warder


Such small buttons. Who’d have thought it?
And the chain so delicate, the cartoon keys,
so small for this tough woman with the skirt stretched straight
across her legs, the bloody tights, brick shoes.

The solid hips are right. The faded face.
I have effaced myself, she’d say, if so she spoke.
Rules are locked inside my chest and buttoned tight away
like breasts. What’s beneath the fabric

I refuse to know.



The vegetable vendor

“The vegetable vendor raised her face: she was my grandmother.”
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, p 75.

Raise your face
from the piles of aubergines,
the onions, garlic bulbs. Look up.

My grandmother the vegetable seller,
who sat by her table in the market
plaiting into ropes the long leaves of the onions,
looked up and in her eyes I saw
the dining table, six chairs,
the tall-boy, dresser, all in matching oak,
carved flowers, which went with her from her father’s
to her husband’s house.

She had not been born to selling fruit.
Someone was at fault.

Alan Baker - The Book of Random Access (59)

The January sky was pale blue, with watery clouds. My perception of the world is limited by my five senses, and my perception of image is limited by my sensual perception of light. Image, time, mind and memory... to try to capture them seems absurd and futile. When my grandfather was out of work, he'd scrub the kitchen floor; he was a good man, my mother tells me. He fell out of an army truck and escaped the Great War. My perception of him is limited by my five senses. He is here in the present, along with my entire past, this desk and computer, along also with the future. The history and energy of presence. Good night, see you in the morning - that's the kids sorted out, let's have a glass of wine. The present, singular or plural, pale as January's sky with all its clouds. The past is present like a shifting sky of pale blue and thin cloud. The future, all our futures, are a presence like a shifting blue in a cloudy sky. All futures are invented. The origin of futures was in trade in agricultural commodities, and the term is used to define the underlying asset even though the contract is frequently completely divorced from the product. As you age, your future contracts. I see the future without me in it - with my children in it maybe. Nothing ever stands still - keep moving ahead with us. The future is orange. The future doesn’t exist. Let’s pour the wine.

=====

Texts quoted:

The Encyclopaedia Brittanica on 'futures'.
Eric Gamalinda, 'Language, Light and the Language of Light' (Pinoy Poetics, Meritage Press).

Alan Baker - The Book of Random Access (58)

The process of filling in the bay had been going on for one hundred years. The reduced market for egg-hatching machines and spittle-cups made the change necessary. Whatever its appeal, Malmo is full of funkiness. People don't usually hang out in restaurants till late in the evening and it can be hard, thus, to track down a decent meal after dark should you get famished in the wee hours. The taxi took me down a dark road, far away from where I wanted to go, finally leaving me at a deserted hotel with no obvious way back. I had no choice but to climb the steps to the poorly lit lobby. Death is no longer enshrined in taboos. What was this hotel? My reflection in the doorway revealed to me my true self: a bipedal primate mammal, anatomically related to the great apes but distinguished by a more highly developed brain, with a resultant capacity for articulate speech and abstract reasoning, and by a marked erectness of body carriage that frees the hands for use as manipulative members. Famished in the wee hours. Burnt out on the trail. Not using my modem (I get no dial tone). A haunted man. Then she uprose, the only rose for me. She didn't understand me, nor I her, but that made things more interesting. She knew that the moon influenced the cycle of the tides. She circumnavigated the globe, she shook my pockets loose and took me home to meet my life. My hands were freed as manipulative members.

=====

Texts quoted:

The Encyclopaedia Brittanica on 'Death', 'Human Being'.
Tourist brochure for Malmo, Sweden.

Alan Baker - The Book of Random Access (54)

[He] remembered not only every leaf of every tree of every wood, but also every one of the times he had perceived or imagined it. Forgetfulness might seem bliss, like falling asleep in a comfortable bed after physical work in the fresh air. If you find that difficult, it's something that can be learned. Simple breathing exercises can help, or meditation. Some people find that lavender oil, valerian or other herbs help them. In a prose piece, he envisages a School of Forgetting, where the pupils are taught in specialist fields, such as Forgetting History and Forgetting Language. In the lit room, the window pane is a black square, the streaks of rain are like little lines of glass beads. The modem is flickering, the printer is warming up. There is the case of “AJ,” a 40-year-old woman with incredibly strong memories of her personal past. Given a date, AJ can recall with astonishing accuracy what she was doing on that date and what day of the week it fell on. Because her case is the first one of its kind, the researchers have proposed a name for her syndrome – “hyperthymestic syndrome.” She had been called “the human calendar” for years by her friends and acquaintances. AJ is both a warden and a prisoner of her memories, said Parker, a clinical professor of psychiatry and neurology. They can at times be a burden because they cannot be controlled, but she told us that if she had a choice, she would not want to give them up.

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Texts quoted:

Jorge Luis Borges, 'Funes the Memorious', from Labyrinths.
BrainMind.com - Source: University of California - Irvine, Hyper-Memory: The Inability To Forget, March 7, 2006.
Dennis Tomlinson, review of 'Five Poets from Saxony' (Shearsman), Tears in the Fence 46.

Alan Baker - The Book of Random Access (52)

If the kingdom of the stars seems vast, the realm of the galaxies is larger still. From the North Devon coast we could see the Welsh Hills across the sea, and when night fell, the Milky Way was a pale crystal band across the sky. Our home galaxy is a large spiral system consisting of several billion stars, one of which is the Sun. Many such assemblages are so enormous that they contain hundreds of billions of stars. And yet there are so many galaxies that they pervade space, even into the depths of the farthest reaches penetrated by powerful modern telescopes. Look, I said, if you lie on the grass out here you can see the Milky Way. They rolled their eyes and smiled at each other, but came anyway. The stars were like jewels in a black roof. Below the cliff, we heard sea-surf sounding. At dawn the tides withdraw, currents pull round the headland to the grey Atlantic, past Lundy Island, where seals stare like the souls of the drowned. To have a soul would mean that consciousness was separate from the physical body. Every visible star is a sun in its own right. Ever since this realization first dawned in the collective mind of humanity, it has been speculated that many stars other than the Sun also have planetary systems encircling them, and that some will have life, even advanced civilizations. For the early Egyptians, the Milky Way was the heavenly Nile, flowing through the land of the dead ruled by Osiris.
=====

Texts quoted:

The Encyclopaedia Brittanica on 'Galaxy', 'Cosmos'.

Alan Baker - The Book of Random Access (51)

As if this place were a dream of this place, that comes from no where other than here. If this were true, then ducks rising from a pond in a flurry and splash are taking off into a season of late promise, into which, while the power station spreads its clouds (which, incidentally, are mainly water vapour), late developers come to skinny-dip and young women dream of men who make them laugh. For the young, all things are possible. Would you like to reconsider? The tapestries tell of meadow flowers and men with lutes that strolled through the young land like news of peace, mixed with the uncomfortable freedom that peace brings. The word troubadour is a French form derived ultimately from the Occitanian trobar, “to find” or “to invent.” A troubadour was thus one who invented new poems, finding new verse for his elaborate love lyrics. The young girl in love invents her lover anew, perhaps while lighting a cigarette or texting her friend. The mind thus invents a place that is no where else than the place it's in; the ducks are in full flight now, the estuary extends, painterly and complete, under an extravagant sky. Meanwhile, Super Mario clears the way to a lower (indestructible) floor and heads to the first pipe spawning Bobombs. If you’ve forgotten your password, we can send it to you by email. A home without books is like a room without windows. The casement swung open and she leaned into the May morning, hoping this wasn’t a dream.

=====

Texts quoted:

The Encyclopaedia Brittanica on 'Troubadour'.
Slogan from Jacqueline Wilson's website (www.jacquelinewilson.co.uk).
"New Super Mario Brothers Cheats", (www.cheatscodesguides.com).

Alan Baker - The Book of Random Access (50)

Through effort we develop our character. In this hexagram, wood, standing for our character, nourishes fire; through the good example of our character, we light the way for others. This gives meaning to our lives. At fifty, a man should be rich. But how many are? Money isn't the answer - it's transient and unworthy of our attention. The life span of a five-pound note is one year on average. Between 2004 and 2005, the Bank of England reported that 153,531,778 five-pound notes were shredded. Lakshmi Mittal, aged 55, is the richest man in Britain, with an estimated fortune of 14.9 billion pounds derived from his steel empire. But is he happy? My daughter, born Nottingham 1996, passes me a note: Dad please come up in 15 minutes with water and a Nerofen. I know this is a wrong spelling SOS. The phone is ringing. Hello? It's my mother, born Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1923. She's had a slight fall and spent the afternoon in casualty, but sounds OK now. Now it's time to settle my daughter down in bed. A glass of water and some Nurofen. And I've caught a cold. If I were rich, these things would still happen. We light the way for others. This gives meaning to our lives. My father, born Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1921, died, Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1973, has nothing to say; yet his influence at this time is propitious, and worth more, I may say, than all the banknotes shredded by the Bank of England. And he wasn’t rich, or anything like it, at fifty.

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Texts quoted:

A Guide to the I Ching, Carole K. Antony (Antony, 1980).
Schott's Almanac, 2007.

Alan Baker - The Book of Random Access (46)

There is no one reality. Each of us inhabits a separate universe. That's not speaking metaphorically. This is the hypothesis of reality suggested by recent developments in quantum physics. Reality in a dynamic universe is non-objective. Consciousness is the only reality. So reality means the memories of each person? That dog that I'm watching scampering across the park in the chill autumn fog, running until he's out of sight in the gloom. Is he in a separate universe? We can confirm that your order was sent from our Fulfilment Centre. Tomorrow is the shortest day, St. Lucy's day, the winter solstice. Four more shopping days till Christmas, and the Sony Wii is out of stock everywhere. The Wii handset is a piece of advanced technology; it uses an accelerometer and a gyrometer to measure motion and tilt, and likewise utilizes both infrared and Bluetooth technology to interact with a sensor bar and to send information to the Wii console. The universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. M-Theory is defined in eleven dimensional space-time with ten dimensions of space and one dimension of time. F-Theory may contain two dimensions of time and ten dimensions of space. We believe that a multiverse of universes exist like bubbles floating in Nothing. Like a star at dawn, lightning in a summer cloud, a phantom and a dream. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder … we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.

=====

Texts quoted:

Interview with Dr Michio Kaku, BBC.
The Universe and Multiple Reality, by Professor M. R. Franks.
The Ghost in the Atom, by C. W. Davies and J. R. Brown, ed., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)
Sir James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe (New Revised ed.), (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1932; Cambridge: The University Press, 1932)

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Alan Baker is the editor of Leafe Press. Other sections of The Book of Random Access can be found in Great Works, The Hamilton Stone Review, and on his own blog, Litterbug. The Book of Random Access has 64 sections, and each section has 256 words. 64 is the number of hexagrams in the I-Ching, and both 64 and 256 are significant numbers in computing. This is the first of seven sections from the sequence which Gists and Piths will be serialising over the coming week.

Zoë Brigley - Two Poems After Anne Brontë

Anne of the Opening Hand

In the overgrown garden, the winter days pass
like the long black column of a funeral train:
the hands of the mourners sheathed in white gloves,
their blank fingers pale and missing the nail.

Beside the blighted Scotch firs, the boxwood swan,
and the castellated towers of the bleeding laurels,
he considers the risk of encounter, whether
it is safer to admire me from this distance.

Out there in the wilderness, his hands strike poses.
Like trees and shrubs under a gardener’s shears,
they readily assume the shapes I give them:
the swallow and warrior, the lion or goblin.

He reaches the garden gate never saying a word,
though the branches against the window sound
a round of applause. All that is left
is a hand waning, reaching across this parting hour.


Landlocked

“Were an alteration to take place while she was far from home and alone with you – it would be too terrible – the idea of it distresses me inextricably, and I tremble whenever she alludes to the project of a journey. In short I wish we could gain time and see how she gets on”
-Charlotte Brontë writing in a letter about her sister Anne’s proposed trip to Scarborough

During the long night, I write my desires:
a letter for help that longs for a glass-flat sea.

But she cannot bear me to leave and by morning,
she has drowned my letter with words of her own.

I rise at dawn and chalk the streets with pledges
to walk the narrow edge of cliff-top verges.

She stands below my window and above I listen
for donkey carts that rumble on a faraway beach.

I drink the bland nectar of dandelion tea
with oranges sweet enough to eat on the sand.

I fill up the silence with a long caress
that makes little impression on her safe footing.

Still the water rises, the gulf will fill:
I float like a boat out of landlock.

==========

Zoë Brigley's first collection, The Secret, was published by Bloodaxe in 2007. Her work has appeared in a number of publications, including The Manhattan Review, and Horizon.

David Morley - Painted in Nest Boxes: Bird Poems (9)

Twite

[song]



Fat trills, buzz-notes, electric twitters.
The hedgerow shred from inside by scissors.
This one moving eye to watch us while we
scaled the five stiles from the Wye to Hoarwithy.

David Morley - Painted in Nest Boxes: Bird Poems (8)

Great Tits

[song]



high wire acrobats
of our bird feeder’s
three ring circus

clingers   climbers
ringers    rhymers

they call for teachers
for teachers

& have nothing
to learn

David Morley - Painted in Nest Boxes: Bird Poems (7)

Willow Tit

[song]



black cap
                  & black bib
world’s eye
                  on the wold
skids sideways
                  skywards
brightest ear
                  of the wood
listening
                  in zigzags
sounding
                  the twigs’
precision
                  xylophones

David Morley - Painted in Nest Boxes: Bird Poems (6)

Greenfinches
‘greenness a thousand times more green’
      —Dorothy Wordsworth

[song]



Now they are precision
      instruments
      for opening seed hearts.

Now they are jade lanterns
      on a bough -
      sweet-hearts and pair-bonds.

Now they are emerald
      lamps lit
      over the bird feeder.

Now they lime-light the branches,
      bright
      pears or goosegogs.

No green more greener
      nor no finch
      more finchier.

David Morley - Painted in Nest Boxes: Bird Poems (5)

Dunnock

[song]



Trust the plainest of birds
with the sweetest calls

to carry them under cover
lest they fall into the claws

of a hoopoe or golden plover.

David Morley - Painted in Nest Boxes: Bird Poems (4)

Chaffinch

[song]



whose call
(according to Bill Oddie)
is as a cricketer bustling up to bowl
who hurtles to the crease
then releases

                                    the
                                    ball

David Morley - Painted in Nest Boxes: Bird Poems (3)

Wren

[song]



        that
                ratt-

                                ling

                                        hedge
                                has   a heart
        the coppery heart—
                                        beat of bushes from
which
                                                it  bursts  the
smallest

                        god-

                send

David Morley - Painted in Nest Boxes: Bird Poems (2)

Long-Tailed Tit

[song]



          A nursery ball
        with a bell inside
    blown through branches
      —a bauble with a tail
         peals in its nest-
          bell of lichen.

David Morley - Painted in Nest Boxes: Bird Poems (1)

Earshot

Were it not for the slight upended
twite suspended below that lancing spray
of elder blossom then the light that slid
through my eye last night, that told
the twite’s call within an ear of my eye
might well, might not, might never, be remembered.

==========

David Morley directs the Warwick Writing Programme. He has published more books and won more prizes than we could possibly list here, but his poetry collections include Scientific Papers and The Invisible Kings (both with Carcanet), whilst in 2007 he wrote The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing. Gists and Piths will be serialising more of his bird-poems over the next few days as part of our Midlands poetry season.

Two Poems by Jane Commane

Circa

Night as rag-soaked petroleum,
the whisper of moon creaks
through the cloud’s machinery.

Something has taken a hold
that leaves you wondering
where it all began –

with milk turning thick-sour
clotted in the bottle, or the soft
gyrations of motorway noise

trapped in lobes of the landscape’s
shell-coils, or with the funeral march
tapping blind on the pipes in the wall.

Childhood rusts, counted on coat hooks
in cupboards-under-stairs, a spark caught
silently as a kiss threatens a dithering island.


Blackbird

Nightfall recast, an angler’s line
falling still into a dark plot
formed invisible –

the soft tremor of breath
sending footprints tumbling
across the lover’s sheets.

Yet the blackbird breaks a chorus
as soft as the egg-blue
spoiled on pavement

Yet the blackbird sings
in the cloud-dense lateness
and tears a hole right through

and the shivering alarm
hacks through the dead wood,
razor resonance.

The half cut moon, deepest neutral
hangs down and the strings are cut.
Illusions falter - we deserve nothing,

with our dreams full of doppelgangers,
unborn declarations, we deserve
nothing less, nothing more than this,

and at the wrong hour, pitch perfect
siren of the heartless unease -
we reset our clocks.

as the sonnet breaks itself, falls to ash,
dawn becomes a vagrant,
missing amongst the refuse of night

==

Jane Commane runs Nine Arches Press with Matt Nunn, and they also co-edit Under the Radar magazine. She is currently working on a first collection, due out in Summer 2010. She has also recently worked with visitors at the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth, and some of the resulting poems can be viewed here.

Mark Goodwin - Blackbird Stir

in my friends’ new house
in their attic between

two big brown bookshelves
randomly packed with poetry

I pass

sleep’s pages through
my head and my head’s

pillow is
a waking word

and the ajar skylight conveys air
as a bird’s opening

of song

*

at one morning now
in a corner of beak

my entire life liquid
on a blackbird’s tongue

long song-notes hold
a gloss house of sound

in the top of this voice-house
& light rhyming I sleep

I sleep between clear eaves
of soft death graceful

as one immortality’s moment

*

outside in part-light’s dim glee

outside over Sheffield’s hills
houses’ roofs flutter & flow

roofs like wings & beaks
with sleeping beneath

*

between two bookshelves
between two halves of beak
between attic roofs

I am in

a blackbird’s dream