Issue 3: September 2003
Rhian Gallagher | A.B. Jackson | John McAuliffe | Jane Routh | Sarah Wardle
A.B. JACKSON
Missing
Tell me of the scattering of the man who is saved: who
are mixed with him, and who are divided from him?
Zostrianos, 45. 4-5
He wanders lost in a blue
green T-shirt and bedroom slippers
guided by the patron saint of travellers
His printed face joins the queue at bus shelters
Seven miles from his mantlepiece he beds down
His solar-powered watch is faithful to the time
He sleeps with his head in Spain
and his feet in Springburn
Mercury turns retrograde to Mars
At midnight he enters a market garden
where, as prophesied, he eats
tomatoes and strawberries
At 4 a.m. he is courted by the rain
By 6 he is pronounced in love
The Christmas Pet
A blood-sport refugee
kicking its heels in sanctuary.
It was an impulse buy,
spurred on by the children
and the straw season.
Care required, minimum:
recommended food, anything,
make the den inviting,
give the gold nose-ring
a good polish.
It did not flourish;
I offered barley and mash
without success. It grew
lean and repetitive, slow,
lean and repetitive. Now,
having churned up the lawn,
it patrols
the small circle of indoors
scoring things with precise horns.
A Ring
1
You and I could be, knowing just this much —
In times of flood, clamber to the roof;
wear day-glo orange, holler. Train your sight
on tiny omens. Take them as a truth.
On orchard walls, new buds and barbed wire.
In the cat's jaws, game, as we're in love.
2
The kitchen table, the bed where we move
to serve and share the long meal of a kiss —
The lost and found debris of togetherness:
wine bottles, underwear, dead birds, amethyst —
The granny wallpaper: identical ships
on their small identical pedestals of sea.
3
With both of us asleep, the room wakes up,
a durable masque of curtains, ashtrays, cups.
They see what lies between us, face to face:
an hourglass — a space dividing profiles.
Let's taunt our eyes eternally with this,
let's always cancel one or other out.
4
Fuzzy, undefined, we look again —
Our city stands, a forest of alarms,
TV aerials, dogs chewing footballs;
a broken sign which reads: Salvation Arm.
Invisible, the rainbow's other half,
the sister-arc that ploughs beneath the earth.
Web site: www.abjackson.co.uk.
First collection available from Amazon.co.uk: Fire Stations (Anvil, 2003).