Personal Space Out on the isthmus, they could be sales reps on a junket. One shoulders his rifle like a paintball gun. The balaclava slips as he aims across the scrub till a hand on his arm defers the event. On the headland, a man in a coat with too many pockets scans the horizon.Continue reading “Personal Space”
Category Archives: New work
That an Horse hath no gall
A horse in a field is worth two in the hand Applejack is a reliable and hard-working pony, although headstrong about doing things on her own[1] take horses for an example, if you look closely you notice that all horses have exactly the same face[2] Glueing coconuts to your dogs feet so people think youContinue reading “That an Horse hath no gall”
Go for Gold – A Poem for the Olympics
Oh, wow, look – glossy sponsors’ logos glow from forty foot gobos from Romford to Croydon to Pontoon Dock. LOCOG! No go for dogs or cowboys. LOCOG! So fond of sports: to trot, to shoot, hop-scotch, golf. Who to root for: GB bods or jocks from Togo, Oslo, Congo? No odd jobsContinue reading “Go for Gold – A Poem for the Olympics”
Seven Seven, Eight Fifty
The BBC have produced a beautiful and sad documentary to mark the seven year anniversary of the London bombings: One Day in London. This terrible event has personal resonances for me, as I was living, as I do now, in Aldgate – site of one of the three explosions on the underground. This poem, writtenContinue reading “Seven Seven, Eight Fifty”
The Other Maria
Maria, guardian of a thousand year tradition with your ageless olive face and lips ajar just so, I am eating chilli tortillas from the bag and thinking of you exhorting us to discover hidden secrets experiences, itineraries, with your lips apart as if to speak (though in this guise you are always silent). IContinue reading “The Other Maria”
Eruption Island
uncut pirates w/ automatic weaponry go dolphin mad! adrift & emasculate boys whose frondy underarms are undermined we say most unforgettable & recommended crater caught mid-spew not even technically volcanic but about which we might say the process of making / being made makes manifest in dark unlicensed ways a view of motion paused yetContinue reading “Eruption Island”
This is what a love poem looks like
You are underfloor heating. You turn my insides to so much packable meat. You are thoughtful in dreams. You make secret signs. You swim with impunity. You are speculative. You are radio & tides. If the cuckoo sings you sing right back. You wake to this. You have the qualities of snow. You are spaceContinue reading “This is what a love poem looks like”
Poem Set in a Remote Outpost of the British Army
** We go to bate the jauntier hun, the pearl that grows in the wadi. One jaunt leaves half the team without toenails, just shims in obis sucking up toxic puds and fingering the pearly hafts of their rifles. So we spar amongst ourselves, eke out our wraths in full gillie, knees against the dashboardContinue reading “Poem Set in a Remote Outpost of the British Army”
Everyman
Your shaven pate has the hue of a whole economy chicken in the freezer cabinet though not corn-fed with the yellow almost foreign tinge and you are not kettled because you do not care though you are trapped inside the centrifugal force of this one-way system and a mediaeval subway through which I used toContinue reading “Everyman”
The Herbals
3:AM Magazine has published a poem of mine: The Herbals. Thanks to Poetry Editor SJ Fowler for that. Written last year sometime, this piece now seems strangely prescient. Then again, you can stretch a poem pretty far. In any city or text-based practice to be confined in such articulated coffins collapses desire & its attainmentContinue reading “The Herbals”
Tom Chivers 