Its only defences now, a ring of gorse,
cat snake in strange fruit tangling the land with vine,
its lights diminished like clothes sewn onto the body.
Beyond, the mossy gums
and their barrackyard laughter;
Augustus, chasing gateways that open to the view
and a stone pile.
High pitched calypso exfoliates
my horse, grinning still
when she touched him
nostrils full of sip bush rum.
Is so one day he go build one shack,
something huge enough to blame.
She wrings her hands
against the wind’s shoulder,
his sawdust jaw stitched like river silver
so I think I understand
I found
I glimpse
I disheveled
I listen
I still
I would’ve been
“I’m bleeding all over.”
The land is three-sixty,
splits the sky in two,
and up this hill is a lagoon,
the hail’s pepper shot,
a Methodist spire
and the man who lost his son.
This piece is a mashup of Owen Sheers‘ ‘Y Gaer’ and a passage from Anthony Joseph‘s The African Origins of UFOs. Check out Poets on Fire to vote for your favourite mashup!
Tom Chivers 