A Sestina (po-faced), by Stiglitz

"The Arthur H. Jellings Collection of Vinaigrettes."


I have it on the best authority –
‘It was a heartless bastard didn’t blub, become involved,
When Les, a ginger temp, his lack of airs…’
A shock to find: I only cry these days at TV reviews, and rue
Instead the indifference, the revenge I’m walked
Through. Fluctuations, periodic surges; must


We poach and diminish, in a centrifugal egg dance? Must
Parts break off? Better to defer to waterfalls, the authority
That shocks unchoked planets of river into icing on the rocky walk-
Way (over half-chewed pills of orange skeet). I became involved
Involuntarily, a curve of fate. Andrew
Was there sometimes, on the banks of the unreconstructed Aire –


That much I remember. And now there’s something in the air,
Which strikes totemic at my guts – a cry that must
Be heard: He’ll take me down, and
Ruthlessly at that. But the long-run is a misleading guide. An author
That too easy, too useless, predicts the ocean calm after a storm. Involve
Yourself in this bended life? I haven’t washed for months, just walk


Into the river and splash water on my face for prayers, walk
Out again unclean and thus: imagined agents plot the poetry, the air,
Of my demise. Riposte riposte. A gaggle of sneaker wings: involved
Moths at an ur-sun. And the fucking triangle, at which I then must
Die. Do you/she talk now that she’s sired? Do those old facts still wield authority?
Do sex-crimes stay your hand? Andrew,


My approach is tricksy, but how else to suggest depth? To turn Gepetto too, and rue
The three degrees? To never call a truce? Know this: I didn’t walk,
I floated, and to unthread the whole magnificent… The Authority
Of the market is no surprise. The very air
That swives these purple plant corns, is as mustard
Seed; or memory, whose price is felt but subject to inflation (is involved


But lacks the agency of waterfalls). I involve
You now, involuntarily – you do not know you are my enemy. And
Rules, like mustard, like cartilage, fathers, are also snaked. This much I must:
Your continued excellence causes entrenchment. I walk
Because I bled favours from your guilt. The air
Is never clear, only scented. You have this on my questionable authority.


Must we involve The
Authorities? Andrew,
We walked on air.

bumper batch of memory poems, by Egg, F.

Rocco




Rocco, aged four, telling his recurring dream:

running down the slopes of a spewing volcano

narrowly avoiding with desperate leaps

the myriad streams of lava.

Sometimes he does it driving a truck.







stray dogs song, Mostar

dogs reading in their magazines –
oh it’s just because they’re int-erested
- stray dogs
the muezzin calls us most periodically
to knees

dogs dip their hindlegs in their tea –
oh it’s because they’re mal-adjusted –
- dead dogs
the bell calls us almost eventfully
to peace

dogs licking empty margarines -
oh it’s because they’re no lon-ger prehensile
- free dogs
they seem to taste of all of our history
and ease


abuse
an upright man came to tell him
what he was eager to hear
that he could trace the footprints
that had led up to here

that life was like the database
the grateful policemen’s tryst
that memory was the couch
at the psychiatrist’s

that each line in the mirror
had been etched by this or that
that causality is simple
that the face is like a map

there was the click of typing
as melting responsibility
a depletion of funds went unnoted
and a bright day froze him chilly

an overflowing drawer was cleared
at home without a word
it was enough he knew
the report had been interred




in a sighed future declarative with conditional ellipsis


a polite warning of mess, a touching tacit warning of emotional incrementum
offered the threshold-crossing
fun suddenly became weighed as ultimata,
aborted the operation

scared of a change
and wondering if retro-fitting mouths were what was required
(it started with deliberately pissed jeans in our garden)
that might lead to the eyewandering day street

and confessing the pragmatic want to keep scumbag options open
and not be introduced as one of them

so let the fish flounder
tilt, jolt and slight shrink

and then a slow and silent shrink
whose awkwardness was not really awkward except much later when its moment crystallised.

sure, there was subsequent even fulfilment
even under a particular pale roman nose
but there was never another road not taken
Was this a real fork or memory’s highlighter –
Hollywood made its confident claim.
left wondering and ungrown since then.



More rats and denty

That rough boy was right about how they fuck you up
and now holds a sardonic professorship.
Think about it daily on the trudge
at the third lamppost, look down,
at the oversize shoes that drew blood:
resentment has conglomerated on these, their successors.
Your life is like this, memory meanders on itself
or oxbows off stagnant.
Ask: why is an eyesore’s prominence on a map of misery
such mitigating cold comfort?