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The Green Coliseum.

By IAIN BRITTON.

 

I.

night’s garment

exposes

shadowy rhythms

the green coliseum

seizes

what i’m trying to do

i insinuate

sun shade – forest shade

a shuffling of tributaries

i plunge into a solitary place

dishevelled – time altered

time bent by intrepidness
by the invasive
biting off of old anecdotes

II.

from the sea – scoria

cuts loose on half-bloodied moons

i feel

the wind’s teeth – the flurry of wingbeats

flogging the air

a wake-up call
feeds my hunger

the green coliseum

incorporates this forest

which stands on its pad of earth

exposes its masthead
its stormcloud of branches

its henge of wooden arches

idiosyncratic & changing

III.

fable-packed – i taste harmonies

new astral flavours – words
sweetened daily

so how to restore this green coliseum

to show off its flax cloaks
its trophied artefacts – the treasures of stone

i enter the earth’s body

spiralling

amongst convolutions of stars

i enter the earth’s body
from staircase to staircase
scaffolding to scaffolding

i open windows – doors – i pull

in the night
the visible planets – the incandescent
lozenges of light

IV.

beached high

lupins curl into pools of colour

i go with people

with aspirations
of transmigratory visions
similarly shaded

i go – dispersing personalities
into airborne Pisceans

children
flapping their gills
negotiating
through the eyes of fish

V.

in the coliseum

firmly rooted evergreens flourish
amongst mountains
& lakes

something archetypal

is touched
is isolated

i choose this forest spectacle

born out of a deep ocean trench

i climb the coliseum
untether the stars

i haul up pieces of crockery
smashed clay pots
shattered glass

i display the unpublished fragments
of a writer’s story

i cement things together

restore the coliseum
from the peeled interference of its past

••

my visceral needs

undo my assessment of who i am

shelved in sanctuaries – in libraries –
in cells for lost fuckers – each day

i watch

where i want to be

i exist amongst plunging skies

in love with the stillness

the green coliseum
the black isobars squeezing against hills

VI.

i live through

earth creep
sun creep

friends lick their wounds
lick the wounds of others

i work with them

through childhood – adolescence – old age

i fully imagine – we open ourselves
like windows

each morning becomes an elaboration


IAIN BRITTON is an Aotearoa New Zealand poet and author of several poetry collections. His work has been nominated for a Forward Prize for Best Single Poem and Best First Collection. Poems have been published or are forthcoming in Harvard Review, Poetry, The New York Times, Wild Court, Blackbox Manifold, The Scores Journal, Stand, Agenda, New Statesman, Prototype, Poetry Birmingham and Poetry Wales. The Intaglio Poems was published by Hesterglock Press 2017. In 2022, a new chapbook – Project Constellation — was launched by Sampson Low.

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