Another Metaphor, Unclassified
This cinema was a long time in the making: they strengthened important parts, ensured just the right balance of darkness and light. Paid little attention to escape routes. Then they came in slow messy queues, some to watch movies, some to dance on the seats, some just to see if ice-creams were still served in intermissions. Others stood outside too long, picking holes in the posters, on their way to someone else. Night Echoes Everything echoes at night: the opening of a wrapper the crunch of stones the breath of the wakeful. Screams that are only in my head. L in the Gin Dictionary It fell out at Long Pedlar and Louching their illustrations not as colourful as Lime or Fruit Cups – your bus ticket, primary-coloured with McDonald’s money off biro’d with I couldn’t do it. I used it to mark the Bitter Lemon page to measure a Long Pedlar into evening a shot of knowledge in my glass. The cocktail was no Bramble no Gin Rickey but your words lingered like bitters. What's all this about Hawthorn blossom smelling of sex? A Found Poem The hawthorn hedges of the acre weighed down with memorable swags musky with sexual undertones snowy flowers swoony, heavy. Along this shore lop-sided branches leaning out from the ditch away from westerly winds and withering of seaward buds. Gnarled and twisted trunks vigorous virtually everlasting centuries of sinews within their roots with which to start again. Sow them in a row so close they nearly touch earth pressed tight around them. Hawthorn blossom smelling of sex. My rural English mother wouldn’t let it in the house. Source: Sexy Smell of Hawthorn by Michael Viney in The Irish Times online, June 6th 1998 Lanes Today I walk inside an old attitude the thought settles like talc. Diary pages spread out into flapjack fields, sticky up close, the tunes of a hundred unchecked birds wound into hedgerows like tangled ends in the knitting bag. Parked up in the lane raw flesh hot sweet smoke bent over headlights I imagine a garden gas tank full of wine At the boggy end of things, a swing, held in the crook of a tree’s elbow tempts a five-bar gate into a clumsy embrace – over away over away rope squealing a hamster wheel rhythm as two boys share the tyre seat, each pushing at each other’s edges. Scratting for urgent space in the boot with blankets clamping my smile around a cider can. Not the first to make tracks here The lane twists into a final choice, two curled paper horns of a bread bag. Sparrows drip-drip through branches, the past scratching like brambles. Snowdrops hang their heads. First published in Cool Rock Repository’s Inaugural Expo 2 new poems by Marie Little : Portrait & What the Others Know A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Marie Little
Fevers of the Mind 