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Country Matters

DEDICATION

 

Flamingo, urchin, bestiaric beast:

Paroling city matters, you re-form

From pigeon’s dirty feather to a quill.

 

A parlour game: we reach the dovetailing

Between those singing spasmic pities that

We summon, and the dank urbanity

 

You wreak. It comes to punish this reserve.

Love: whether zoo, circus, menagerie,

All matters of a name more so than form,

 

Let us rush towards autowilderness,

Strifed with wet, chaostic humours. 1

Erotic prescience : I sense us : one.

 

We’ve taken flyte, so let us rest in shelter,

Into the original of the world,

Nothing can stop our loved country from mattering.

 

ONE

 

*

 

There is a woman turning a woman turning

itself on

 

Sick hydra starting up    I dream

of sea becoming seaworthy to sea

 

The sea drownsy    in its offensive capability

 

Drownsy Baby        thirsting in its sleep        Hush now

 

Totemic fetish or mnemonic logo    :    her offensive cheep    :    untid’ly starting

up for the tide    :                cheap

 

*

 

You cannot scry in your own silver when

its ripples split the vision

 

They cannot peer into a depth they’ve mined        and filled

Selfsang in their own gags        Dull drams overfilled

—spilling unward

 

Eat your eyesight, bastard            Ring yourself unfit

 

*

 

Q: Where has this water gone? Why disappear?

 

A: Add an arch to the middle of valour. There’s your answer.

 

 

 

In the mean time, build a city        Then build a countryside

for balance

 

Now, not sea at all                They become

 

ardor’s coldened shoulder            Ardor eccentric

Radiating inward

 

Throttling at different purposes and speeds.

 

*

 

TWO

 

An altared state urned in a loss of verse

Severed then served with coming of the morning

My love has earned this insurrective swerve

That seeks to crash the calming of his mourning

 

*

 

You rest inequality

 

If I was embedded in a painscape, it’d be different

 

Q: Where do you rest?

A: Camped out

in the bedazzled house

of his runtish fantasy

 

His House Believes …

 

As it is now, there is
an asterisk to every kiss

 

 

Let me rest
in that nest of those pink, electric branches

 

There, there is safety

 

*

 

THREE

 

To have a handle on something is to have the capacity to turn

it on or off

 

*

 

What I    cuse him of I    cuse myself

 

*

 

When they are together, their shape

is endless and content

 

The sea drinking the sea                    The sea is drinking

the sea

 

*

 

The vulvic octopus dies with her young

Meanwhile, I:    waste    with my    youth

 

The staggering dear does not accept my hand,

fawning and shrill. Cast off from my ilk, my hart.

 

*

 

FOUR

 

Dysgenic bodie’s calling back to you,

Consumed and mated. Her dysphoric flesh;

Locked within your own twin study; She’ll

do anything, at last, to prove your bad.

 

 

Gravity holds each wave in vassalage.

Without gods, there is none mastered;

O gypsum child: I see through your age,

Such wind wrinkles water alabastered.

 

*

 

Fair Access more than anything

: I wish them will

 

 

 

THE GARDEN OF LOVE’S SLEEP

After Messiaen’s Turangalîla

 

Dinner is poured                Then: his hand on mine –

 

Instead

of sensation

I receive

 

The dream
Of two green peacocks

Pouring smooth grails of touch

Each across the other

 

Necks arched in extravagant,

Romantic love.

 

*

 

Insomnia swells a congealing city

Congests each head with        phrases:

 

‘A horse called Horus or just Birdy’        ‘A wine press named War on Earth’:

 

Those haute contour contraptions from the ancién French regime

 

*

 

Áwake        Who is with me?        Whó

Will unhook
The colours’ ruffles from sunrise

Each by each?

 

When we talk about Manifestos

I feel white
Doves sprung from a Magician’s

Sleeves on sleeves

Release

 

In this state

And at this event

 

*

 

On open caboose    On train to Vladivostok

Mosquitoes are breeding quickly in the dark

 

Clouds’ petticoats uncross                Cross again

Flashing the sun from which we cannot hide

Which catches us
Spoiled and sticky

 

Like Love’s Sunday

 

*

 

The emperor’s clothes are very beautiful and they

Are very real    I remember them like the song

That climbs back to me in snatches:                Harbouring

The antiseptic beauty                        `                        Harpooning
the August moon                                                Haranguing
the something        something        something            Noon

 

*

 

Have we slept? I’ve found us
Flabberghastly    Clean and glamorose
Like the courtesan    who appears here
And all other places        in a new state
age    dress    civility
Having forgot the crashing sound of a beating door

The stench of the night closing in
Endarkening                                                O Carrion!

 

*

 

At last

 

Something beautiful arrives!

 

The equal weightéd phrase
That leaves your mouth and the sky

At the same time


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

is an American-British writer born in 1994. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Rialto, and other publications. Her debut collection PLUS ULTRA is out with CHEERIO in April 2023.

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