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Fugitive

I trace the stacked

voices of shouters

how they immingle

fraternally

on first hearing

with the vaporous

nick of taxis

gold-rushing the avenue

as if they were

part of the same

equation

(or miscalculation)

yet ruminantly fugitive

one or the other

sound falls back

to tundra distances

creating

double-choice

(like the way air

can be seen

to palm through

a good photograph

despite being

locked into the essential

stillness)

the street nerved

with intended pitch

and the aheadedness

of sound being raked

into a kind of sonic theatre

after leaving the ear

(or appearing to leave)

where it encores

thread-frail

yet able enough

to jet the mind

for a second or more

undeserted

in the half-silence

as if nervously

retouched

to the shock of it


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

James Byrne’s most recent collection, Blood/Sugar was published by Arc in 2009. Bones Will Crow: 15 Contemporary Burmese Poets (June 2012), is co-edited with ko ko thett and is the first anthology of Burmese poetry to be published in the West. Byrne is editor of The Wolf and co-editor of Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century (Bloodaxe, 2009). His poems have been translated into languages including Arabic and Burmese.  

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