A Tense to Describe a Duck That Isn’t There
After Asger Jorn’s The Disquieting Duckling

Duck would have been erupting. 
Duck would have erupted. 
Duck continuous erupt 
in the would / have been. Future 
duck the perfect erupts. The never duck 
eruption. 
present simple farmer 
haybales fowl in the is and ises in the ed 
of rural whitewash 	each breath 
	a flesh of brushstrokes. 
a tense to describe the temporal
stretch of canvas. Dapples
of birch leavings to stack 
in impasto. An erupt

	to duck a basal ganglia.

*
A-Political Self-immolators

We fizzy & piffy lakeside straight shooter boys
shoot stray cats from the Baroque balcony boys
we’re landslide boys eat crab boys big bullet 
bully boys hooligan melodies & tenebrous eyes boys
sparkle sparkle little pig we ride rapid boys wide 
boys locked safe boys sink to the depths the Davy 
Jones boys real boy’s boys’ boys locker room 
boys’ talk boys neck foam boys nick phones boys rock
-a-bye baby boys the blue-eyed boys bish bash
bosh job’s a good’un boys we’re those landgrab boys
swamp stab boys drain the blood dig the liver
boys pile-driver boys we’re deep-sea diver boys
black-lung coal miner boys real DH Lawrence boys 
big tough boys with big tough toys oioioi boys 
make some fucking noise boys we’re poison boys
burn the fields salt the earth shatter seas stone skim
boys we’re the make room boys the me-first boys
the boys with a fire in our fists we’re pollution boys 
we’re gruesome boys those lumpen laymen men 
of the earth serf boys we’re wind & rain boys fight 
through snow sludge through mud we breathe gas 
boys bottle rocket shrapnel boys we’re front-line boys 
Gulf War Syndrome born alone die alone eight
pawn boys dethroned boys deflowered & defaced
face the music boys on my mark we go over
trench foot shell shock whizz-bang boys no man’s
land landless boys no stake in society ASBO boys
we’re high fire boys burn like mustard boys
we burn water baptisms of gas explosions stop
drop & roll up a fatty we’re rock n troll star
boys steal your hearts & leave a scar life sentence no 
possibility of parole we’re born to die boys beautiful 
corpse cheap funeral Amazon coffin & BYOB
boys search & destroy boys given no quarter hung
drawn & quartered we’re those coup de grâce
coup d'état boys raze the dead seize the day gone
tomorrow boys we’re the lost boys the last boys
last of our name last of our nature we’re ouroboros 
boys anonymous boys we see things say things 
you wouldn’t dream boys you wouldn’t feed us
to your dog you wouldn’t touch us with his you’d
off with our heads you wouldn’t be seen dead.

Dan Melling is a writer from the UK.
He holds an MFA in Poetry from Virginia Tech and teaches creative writing
at Liverpool John Moores University, where he is also pursuing a PhD.
His work has appeared in The Rialto, X-R-A-Y, HAD and elsewhere.
He co-edits Damnation literary journal.