February 29th 1933
The saddest thing for the English to bear, is not what they have lost, but instead
what they know has not yet been found, but is nevertheless enduring in the shadows.
– Derrick Adderage
The house has slid here
to this wide street-middle; it floats
like a dark ship on smooth wet tarmac; it splits
the road that seems to flow slowly
either side of it.
The houses lining the street shrink
as this one house inflates
with where it came from.
And him.
On the house’s corner.
Loitering. His yellow
flat-cap bright,
like a slumped halo. His black
suit, bat-angular. His hands pushed
into his pockets’ blackness. He seems
to lean against the house, but
vibrating grey light shows between
him & its bricks.
Faint fog slowly shakes its cold flags.
Thin black trees do nothing.
(Whilst inside the house a clock has just ticked
sixty-one seconds within this minute.)
Him. He cannot leave the house-corner.
Yet the house’s cellar repels him.
He is stuck to the sick house-ship. Fixed.
Him as its figurehead. Face
as pale as mist. He is
appalled at where he has been. I am
(are you?) appalled by him
& his moist suit black
as the unseen cellar.
Somewhere within this scene
(and within this moment),
yet deep enough in to be
far out-&-down,
there is a boy with a face round as a vowel;
his skin bright white as fresh frost;
his hair slick as crude oil; his wrists red.
He is whispering softly, so softly.
His is almost a girl’s
voice.
Him
on the corner. The man. He trembles
like a lamp struggling in wind. Wind
that will wrap him now
Man Dressed in a Journey
He is a passenger
in a car his wife drives. Fibres
of winter hedges-&-3
-dimensional meshes of trees reel.
The sun – a needle’s
tip magnified massive – sinks
into the horizon’s seam.
The man’s trousers are rushing road. He wears
tarmac-&-motion on his legs; the road’s
white lines like his bones,
but painted
onto the cloth of his self’s dark.
His shoes are milestones, then water
-troughs for cattle glimpsed
through faint light. Now
his feet wear
houses – miniaturised
at the ends of shoelace lanes.
The man’s jumper is a weave
of sky-&-branches threaded-here
-&-there-
with telegraph wire stretching away
above his body’s
ground.
This man now moves
his arm to touch
and take
his wife’s hand into his lap. Flecks
of startled blackbird, and possibly owl, detail
his sleeve.
Horse Reflecting on Her Time
in an Upstairs Drawing Room
boy
boy got me
boy got me up there
but horse & stairs go
only one way was
strange stuck-up-high stable was
shine
square shine
square shine above
terrible hot flicker-colours
& pops & snorts of a fiery place
in shine
in watery shine
in watery shine I saw
I am horse
long face framed
in a pane of light
big eyes mine seeing my
big eyes seeing them
see me
I am a horse there
I learned books’ taste
feel of pages in my gut
horse hoisted is how
I ended my peopled dream
a little Pegasus-whiff as
my shape passed
through window to ground
now
now out
now out beyond
now out beyond in wide
out in wide green fields
every silvery lit
water trough
every sky-part puddle
even all a length of river-ribbon
twinkle-wriggling at bottom
of bottom meadow
every bright shine
water patch but
every especially every
especially framed
drinking trough
spooks
spooks with
spooks with truths
with truths
truths
I am horse
a horse who
saw
her horse-face framed
in a
in a human
in a human place
Mark Goodwin is fascinated by place, and moving through place, and the continuums of inside-outside & exposure-shelter. He has published five full-length poetry collections & six chapbooks with various English poetry houses, including Longbarrow Press & Shearsman Books. His next full-length (which includes fiction) –Rock as Gloss– is due out with Longbarrow Press in November 2018. Mark lives with Nikki on a boat in Leicestershire.
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