And Four More Poems.

By LINDA BLACK.

◊

ABC

A.

Arturo    Anton   Artaud
. . . icle   . . .  ifact     . . . ifice
&&&&&&     ➳ ➳ ➳
Apples    Apropos    Arcimboldo
Ai Weiwei,   “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn” 1995:

The wilful  desecrAtion of an historic  Artifact was decried as unethical by some,  to which the  Artist replied by quoting  Mao Zedong, “the only way of building  A new world is by destroying the old one.”

Apparition

B.

Bacon    Bach     Baselitz
Bacchus   [sick & pale with Blue lips]
Balsa-wood    Bristles    Bricolage    Baize
Brown-madder    Burnt-sienna
Bolero  [no Buttons]:

Bella emerges from a  Black car wearing a  Black leather  Bolero  Blue jeans  & laced high-heel  Boots – Bolero -moruno    Bolero –Beguine    Bolero-mam Bo  Bolero -cha

Banner    Banksy     Backlit     Banned  

C.

Chiaroscuro    Corot     Caravaggio
Character    [Comic   Conspicuous]  ,,,,,,,,,,
Coventry (➳)    Convent/ion    Cameo [stolen]   Claw
Contrast    Chimera    Curio/sity   Chaos
Canvas    CoChineal     CharCoal    Crayon:

In 1795 during the French Revolution, while Paris was under siege and Cut off from supplies of the best English graphite,  NiColas JaCques Conté invented the  Conté Crayon  made from a blend of natural pigments kaolin Clay & graphite.

CornuCopia

•

Thin representation

(pertaining to my previous collection)

Green and barely visible. I concoct their lives, the ventured moment, the scaffold, the scenario. The skirting breaks off (discombobulated) before reaching its destination. Dado rail, door jammed shut, missing its mouldings, key in the lock, anticlockwise. Turn to the right: antimacassar, arm of a sofa, tasselled lamp-shade (standard), nest of tables—legs missing. Unfit for purpose. Expect figurines. A well-dressed lady lays prone upon the floor, eyes closed.

Fan, perfume bottle 

Hand-mirror, watch-face, hat-pin-holder, knife—conjured? A couple of things are missing—the trick is to know what, the clue insignificant. Whirring lady, spiked arms, conducts a concerto.

Front room 

Twelve ladies and a Dutch girl. (The oldest has a broken arm.) A framed over-lady looking down—magenta hair (spiked), kiss curls, winged bodice, bouquet—perched on a circular chair (Bentwood), its legs sharp. Hers form a ballet pose on points. Six diminutive men seated around a tiny table, pinioned, three either side, look up at her.

The piano is open. Above, behind glass, cat-lady plays well her silent music—a poodle, a terrier watch on. Scale the walls—those flowers will not wither. Miniature bell maidens eye the horse in the corner. The ones with no lower half live upstairs.

Note to self
Where should these words go?—feral , dirty, splintered, rare . . .

Dancer in a blue dress by Linda Black (screen print, edition of 24)

•

Reading Hemingway   

It was bound in limp leather
          —‘God Bless You Merry, Gentlemen’

In the same sentence:
as it was / is   so it was / is told
& so repeated   and  […]  and
said  […]  said   fluidity  clarity  nor
confusion   arrested   I
grasp  praise  follow
willingly  

Beyond:  mandibles
fixtures  &  horns   a cause
maintained  stone by stone   fruit
of disaster   bulls  &  blood
the inner empire  surplus  to life
life in the head   marrow 
desolation   a flooded land
a sunken liner   cape
of  no  good 

•

Just 

words   wanderings  un /
contained  –attempts
at  restraint  –wayward
dominating  disrupted  prying
preying  upon   wound
around  reaping  raking   raiding
the interior   re /
appearing   constant
cavalier   wending  wounding
unrestrained  pervasive
persuasive  rooted . . . . . .
samphire / scabious / scented / scurrilous
succulent / slaking / sounding / sceptic
salient / slacking / suffering / silent 

•

Library   

I choose you Andrew Young (The Prospect of Flowers, 3rd Edition, 1947) for your chapter entitled ‘The Morals of Plants’: ‘But where plants are not persons like ourselves, it has been the practice to imagine they are.’ You Walter Starkie (author of Raggle-Taggle, 1933, subtitled ‘Adventures with a fiddle in Hungary and Roumania’), not for the title Don Gypsy but the prominent note on the front cover ‘First cheap edition 6/- net. 1936’; Waterland (Graham Swift); Thistles and The View in Winter  beckon me through The Same Door. I record in The Red Notebook that Nothing I Touch Stands Still.

♦

LINDA BLACK is Editor of  Long Poem Magazine. A poet and visual artist, she has published five collections with Shearsman Books; the latest, Interior, a collection about her own artwork and process, came out in March this year. Her poems have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, most recently the international ekphrastic anthology Dancing about Architecture published by Mad Hat Press. The Son of a Shoemaker (Hearing Eye, 2012), collaged prose poems about the early life of Hans Andersen, plus the author’s illustrations, was the subject of a Poetry Society exhibition. The Beating of Wings was the PBS Pamphlet Choice for spring 2007. She won the 2006 New Writing Ventures Award for Poetry and received the 2004/5 Poetry School Scholarship.