should I say that the sound
of your name on another's lips
is the thinnest blade -
ice, or spun sugar -
gently penetrating some small
secret casket, a neat trick,
I am a magician's doll
pierced by syllables,
or should I say
that your bone and muscle
shaped through shirt,
collar askew, make my
sinews sing ecstatic
despairing songs - should I say
the shadow of your cheek
makes my heart groan
with desire or should
I say, 'Hullo, been a while,
Nice to see you,' and smile.
Allotment
It wasn't that he didn't tend his plot.
Each day he would sit in the office,
letting insults sink into his skin
with a smile; process data,
the numbers reflected in his eyes.
Each evening he would dig
the bare ground, until ten. In summer
the sun would bleed into dusk
over his spade patiently turning the sod.
In winter, the starlit street would be still
except for, behind the dark hedge,
the steady thunk and grind of earth
twisted and replaced. No seed.
No green shoot or delicate tendril.
No fruit or wriggling worm to tempt the birds
that watched in silence each rolled clod.
No song.
Just his foot pressing down, a ceaseless
shovelling, in rain, snow, baking heat.
Remorseless rhythm resonating, the
driving in, the heave, the brace,
turn at the fulcrum, release, wetly slice
or shatter in dust, he knew the underflow
below his blade, he felt its tug. He dug.
Patient. Things buried deep by time's tide
became flotsam, he dug. He dug. He dug.
Small things would clink against the steel.
He would bend, pick up a shard of white,
a grey rag, something decayed
but persisting faintly in his palm.
At the office sometimes he would hold
an oddment still smelling of earth.
Smile. Squeeze it to shapeless clay.
Stare at the screen. Wait patiently
to dig again.
Bio: Sadie (@saccharinequeen)
Sadie Maskery lives in Scotland by the sea with her family. Her writing will be found in various publications both online and in print, and she can be found on Twitter as @saccharinequeen where she describes herself, optimistically, as "functioning adequately ".
Like dust, smoke, the song of a lark,
the touch of your hand,
that point where gravity defies
a body's desire to float and you are pulled down
to the ocean floor...
That point, high above the horizon,
which determines a landing back on safe green ground
or eternal flight...
Gravity is so gently made,
more a plea than command, come back to me, come back -
and here we stand, at that same point
talking all done and a decision to be made -
do we fall, fly or drift apart? come back to me,
come back.
mr jones
it startles me,
the way our bodies
know how to fit together
when conversation (hi! you look well)
has always been so / awkward /
i suppose chat
(still gigging?) is irrelevant
when our lives
are forever
on different paths
just this
one crossroads involving
legs and hair
(remember when
you had hair i met you at
the party you said
do you play guitar?
have you read Tarantula?)
now we are both
a little ragged and you recede
and shhhhh my memory) and
tongues
intertwined
i never knew
how simple this could
be no need for
interests in common
(i have never read
poetry my god why
would i ?)
when the
essential thing
is
the weight
of love
never to be mentioned
just
weather and
how
sadness smells
like dust on a highway
(something ah
something is happening
here but we don't
we can't know
what it is)
A book review of “Push” by Sadie MaskeryPoetry Re-Post for Leonard Cohen Week: To the End of Love by Sadie Maskery3 poems from “Push” by Sadie Maskery “Lost Child” “Rearrangement” & “Once we were”
Bio: Sadie (@saccharinequeen) Sadie Maskery lives in Scotland by the sea with her family. Her writing will be found in various publications both online and in print, and she can be found on Twitter as @saccharinequeen where she describes herself, optimistically, as “functioning adequately “.
These lovely poems reach out with straining hands to touch the infinite, to press between the pages of a book a moment in time, to capture forever a thought that might stray across the frontal cortex of any person’s racing mind. Or perhaps a lazy, resting mind, as when you’re surfing the internet eager for distraction. The attempt is usually successful, as in ‘404’, which invites us to see the failures of community as it exists online, a place of fear and foolishness where people resent connection before they find the fractured peace they secretly desire. In this experimental poem, Maskery alternates between a more conventional poetic diction and snatches of computer code, suggestive phrases (“HttpResponseMessage Get / (string connection))” that draw you into the authored, mechanical realm lying between everyday utterances written in cyberspace as part of a flame war held any morning of the week in Atlanta or Abu Dhabi. The internet “decays” but “I don’t exist without” it seems, the poet reflecting on the ephemeral by trying to nail down fleeting instants that disappear in the ether as soon as they come into stuttering existence.
A disconnect also exists in ‘Do not enter’, a monologue by a person meeting a visitor at the door. The invitation appears sincere although there is a sign on the door telling people to keep out. Why has the visitor come? It’s not clear. There are no clues as to how this person decided it was apposite to knock – though life is like this, isn’t it? – but what he or she hears should, perhaps, reassure. Questions are raised and some are answered but the sense of foreboding that rests once the poem ends suggests that something is amiss.
This dislocation is repeated in poem after poem, for example in ‘make me’, which is, again, about the internet. Here, in a few words, Maskery tries to understand – and to communicate to the reader – something about its allure, but while the outlines of debate are defined there exist by the end of the poem – which is not long – more questions than answers. What is virality? How does this rare exposure help us to become more completely ourselves? Or is that not the appeal? Perhaps the answer lies in the message of the previous poem, ‘Prayer’, which is addressed to “gods of the ephemera” so that “sins may be sold” (if they could be, we’d all be rich) and “let us devour” the body “sacred / scarred” that we worship.
I really enjoyed reading these digestible items, and the collection often veers off into the inexpressible, as in ‘i’m so sorry, it’s just’ where it’s never clear exactly what the narrator is talking about, just “one sweetness / one beauty” “residue / from its grind / smirching / the smell of small things” though “why / pretend all is well” in this world of destruction and release, of small things broken apart and devoured (looking back to ‘Prayer’) by anonymous crowds of people (looking back to ‘404’)?
Surprises lend their appeal to the chorus of sorrow Maskery unmasks, so in ‘Thread’ the message is thin but eloquent, a single phrase written down to look like a pair of threads – perhaps a strand of DNA encoding our identity – that sit upon the page like flags flying above a parapet on a windy day.
The waves of the lines are enticing and strange. In ‘Beginnings’ an uncommon enticement reveals the outlines of desire, a moment rendered in words like a synapse firing, “The first time we meet the shock / is there but small” and the poet goes on to lay out in miniature the universe of the mind that that instant unfurled. This is a masterpiece of expressive competence, a very strong poem that unearths worlds that are normally buried in the vast wildernesses of memory. As I read I started to recall things that had happened to me, a night when I was maybe 21, a day I went to a party in Double Bay, various times that happened in my life – so long ago – arose to conquer my attention in the flickering present where images combine with the pulse of the computer screen to reveal the mind’s frail existence in all its broken lightness and sorrow.
So the positive dwells in this collection of short poems – many are one page long, some are two pages long – alongside the negative (see especially ‘Networking’), the euphoric (see for example ‘Art’) with the base, the high with the low, the thing to be celebrated with the pain of despair. I was struck by the flexibility of Maskery’s evocative voice, its ability to accommodate a range of ideas and to give utterance to an array of different feelings. This is a memorable book.
A stray ghost, I think as I lie in bed.
She would definitely have fun here
in my sleepless head.
Noone really likes hide and seek -
there is the terror of not being found,
through spite or neglect; is that
how ghosts are made, hiding and noone
to find? but I contain oh so many
forgotten wardrobes and worlds.
I see her with dusty knees and pockets,
(I would make sure she always
had pockets, to keep her treasures.)
We would sew tiny books
from scraps of paper and she
would write secret messages
to me, her imaginary friend, post them
in the nooks of trees in my mind,
that lonely dreamscape with the mist
and dragons and dusty furniture
my hollow heart, hands, belly,
empty rooms to hide.
Rearrangement
Her energy is more disorderly
Scattered through the space
Where she used to sew hems
Sip tea, wear socks to warm her feet
On the kitchen tiles.
She bounces from the shine
Of chrome taps and empty mirrors
Frantic as a bird
Beating against captivity.
Death is. Death is just
A rearrangement. She is
Still here, in fragments.
I try to catch a wisp of the laughter
The smile of her, the kiss
Try to forget
Entropy.
Once we were
where did the anger go
to crush
smash
reduce to fucking
atoms
even those split
by our ferocity
the visceral
pulse
bodies
thrashing with
ecstatic rage
heads thrown
back
not howling
but from the bowels of us
sound dragged from the
pit
they dug
for us
we flew
spinning
shocked
to monstrous
life
we sparked a war
and traded
our integrity
for
a semi
in
Guildford
Bio: Sadie (@saccharinequeen)
Sadie Maskery lives in Scotland by the sea with her family. Her writing will be found in various publications both online and in print, and she can be found on Twitter as @saccharinequeen where she describes herself, optimistically, as "functioning adequately ".
Fevers of the Mind 