Issue 6: January 2004

Paul Batchelor | Zoë Brigley | Olivia Cole | Sasha Dugdale | Anna Woodford

ZOË BRIGLEY

Metropolis

History will tumble down and break into atoms in the lap of the twentieth century.
            — Michelet

I hide in the house, turn back the black cloth
            that covers the window; outside people
cross the frozen river, shivering moths lured to the red
            buildings of power, tall steeples.

I stab a potato at the table: the weight of a heart,
            my mother would say
and dig her fingers in earth. I disable the organ for
            the microwave's display.

Back from trenches, he sleeps upstairs all day; his toes
            turned blue and putrid in his boots:
the green river through the wood to the bay
            that napalm and petrol pollute.

The title of pilots they couldn't shoot named after
            the Middle Age Mongol fleet
that was folded into waves on its route to Japan:
            sacrificed in light and heat.

"Blitzkrieg", he said and spoke of incomplete flesh
            upon cheek upon skin upon bone.
"Operation Overlord": earth and peat of Normandy:
            "Operation Sea Lion"

and last night, the roses and dandelions burnt down
            with the glass palace; we repeat
the crumbling of Babel from word to bone: fat
            ambition and frail bodies compete.

Down the street, a man keeps a bath to heat acid,
            and on the procession route
Princip loiters in the crowd among fleets of news carts.
            SILENT STAR ARBUCKLE SHOOTS HIS LAST SCENE

— the paper precious loot of scandal is only
            ever kept at bay
by human interest: small child with shiny boots:
            9 YEAR OLD VIOLINIST PLAYS HALL TODAY.

We'd go down to Yasgur's farm for the stark display of womens'
            bodies, or clubs that disabled
the senses with cabaret and hearsay about women dancing with
            chairs, on tables.

Outside, crowds wave cardboard placards beneath the
            steeples, throw themselves under
cars, crushed to powder like moths; behind closed doors pungent
            beers, strange plants:

people hide inside and turn back the black cloth.

My Grandfather

gripped his thigh when the long line of planes took
off, his knees bunched in
the rear gunner cockpit. Light pierced the dense
thicket of noise, so
when he peered through the misted glass, he saw
a fleeting glimpse of a
face in the plane parallel; the face
of his friend was a
pale thumb print lit just for an instant and
then it was gone.

The drone of the engine continued its
constant humming, and
he was rocking in time with the engine's
perpetual growl.
He thought of the dead at home when the plane
flew over a map
of lights-the German town they had been sent
to bomb, and the flash
and growl when the city was hit soon fades
in the engine's drone.

On the ground, he queued in the line of men
waiting to draw a wide, white tick next to
their names; but by one name there was no mark:
a black space on the board filmed with dust —
smoke over the night sky.

Zoë Brigley is a new Welsh poet and a graduate of the University of Warwick Writing Programme. Her poetry has been published in magazines like The New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales and Leviathan Quarterly and in anthologies such as The Gift, Reactions 4 and Phoenix New Writing. In 2000, she was chosen for a fellowship with the School for Literary Translation in Tarazona, Spain, and received an Eric Gregory Award in 2003. She is involved in a new small press for the West Midlands, the Heaventree Press, and she has done editorial work for Leviathan Quarterly.