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i display the unpublished fragments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.