Issue 14: February 2007

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

MARK WALDRON

The very slow train,

on the downhill stretch,
moves with the speed with which I grew
and with which I will, in my old age, shrink back
towards the warm and waiting ground —
myself a piston on its single push and pull,
among the billions more,
who grind this almost round world round.
And on the flat we slow to an adhered stamp's progress
across its envelope, or so it seems.
Whole yawning generations
come and go between two sleepers here.
And gazing out the window,
I watch a snail dart and flit beside the track.
The snail, which, before we reach our destination,
will have evolved; its descendents inhabiting shells
with living rooms papered in flock.
They'll rest their single feet on poufs.
They'll watch our train pull in
through windows mucus thin.
They'll see ourselves emerge as orbs of shining mind.
Please God, wait for me.

 

Poor Derek,

whose lukewarm brain in my hot hand I hold.
What thought did slip across this soft wet stone,
did flare in an electric net of gold,
did cling, like a butcher's bag to this throne
of man? What filth, what porn was conjured here,
was collaged from cut pieces of the world,
from stolen ghosts of girls made to appear
in skin-flicks played on silver screens unfurled
like strips of cartilage within this nut
of thinking meat? What dirty dreams were dreamt
when Derek slept, his flicking eyelids shut,
the shell against the soft sweet pillow leant
and in the shell, this brothel lying thus.
See it. As though he dreams again for us.

 

Mark Waldron has been published in The North, Rialto, Smiths Knoll and Poetry London. He was one of the three poetry winners of this year's New Writing Ventures awards. He works as a copywriter.