Issue 14: February 2007

Matthew Caley | Tim Cumming | Valeria Melchioretto | Kathryn Simmonds | Mark Waldron | Tamar Yoseloff

TIM CUMMING

Erratic Transmissions from Oklahoma

She was whistling show tunes, the children
listening for anything unusual. Voices in her head,
men at the door, the bell that doesn't stop.
Topsoil covered every surface of her second address,
the rest of her life a train carriage abandoned
in a distant ploughed field, men's hands pulling
at her hair, chair at the window, the muscles gone
down one side of the face, her secret dream lover
beating up flames from the barbecue pit.
The rest of her life was marching in a straight line
down the hillside of memory and moonshine
clouded in the mason jar of her own little town
when she was a girl, poppies nodding
in the wild meadow before the war. After the hurricane
his pile of love letters made her feel like changing
the locks. 'It's my picture,' she said, her two mouths
speaking at once, monkeys leaping through
the millennium in her book. A beginning and no
end, then, a cause with no effect on the final result.

 

Following the Bloom

One tree bare in a row of three,
the barrels emptied from that life,
leaves the colour of burnt sugars on
Boston Common, swollen polar melt
on the banks of the Charles River.
A single canoeist counts down the bridges
to open sea and court music
of the old world, Elysium projections
onto open country, mixed messages
as the fleet settles under a bowlful of stars,
the crew breaking casts, astrological
portents as big as the silver screen.
Can you see the vines creeping towards
the polar caps, voyages ahead spinning
into snowmelt and silver wind?
The past was filled with thickets
of sex scenes, limbs uncoupling, mouths
popping like bubble wrap, hour-long
explosions under the ice, the ice opaque
with the cloud and stars of constant lovers,
the weight of rivers, fathoms of sleep
wound round itself and spooling up the spine
as the swarm flies south, following the bloom,
the seasons trailing inky jets from the underworld.
Fruits the heart opens in a sweet mouth,
the world her mouth envelops with a kiss.

 

Fever Improvisation

He felt like he'd been strained
through cloth and left to form curds,
an entire belief system. It was time
to download alternative arrangements,
his arm moving in the arc of the organ grinder.
Another week of this, he thought,
and I'll cut off my head and have it stone clad.
The sickness thickened and seasoned
his tongue into a virulent gravy. Days later,
sun rises as the sky clears, streamers
in the upper atmosphere, the one trumpet
blowing from the east.
Settlers had cut a path through the forest,
put up gates and brought in the national orchestra.
Music had long replaced religion with rock gods.
You could hear them in the wilderness,
faint timpani on suburban lawns,
the violins sweeping through the forest
at dawn, explosions of brass
when the leaves turn. The forest
was razed for paper and packaging,
the ground levelled, ball games permitted.
Years later he thought he could see
the whole staircase unwinding to the top storey,
shaking hands with the big chief,
taking his daughter to the green room
where he ravished her, the two of them
thickening like gravy, the fluids,
trumpet and sax circling the setting sun.

Tim Cumming has five books in print, including Apocalypso (Stride), Contact Print (Wrecking Ball) and The Rumour (Stride). Recent poetry performances include improvised collaborations with Lithuanian techno artist Darius at the ICA, and with DJ producer Max Rheinhart and the musique concrete of Langham Research Centre at Radio Gagarin, Notting Hill Arts Club.