The Worked Object: Poems in Memory of Roy Fisher

Steven J. Fowler

Fisher's Face c.1934

 


The one thing we never do in the teams, 

is show you and I were supreme. 

We will not complain. 

We will not change our protagonists. 

We will have to admit, it is a serious problem. 

There is not a healthy one thing to look up into. 

There is not any cache in being 

but there is some in being dead. 


In a normal weather the network is working, 

but all this spring, under robot trees, 

I waited watching pyrotechnics on paving. 

They caused litigation among former neighbours. 

Roots are inevitably unknown, fantastic. 

The whole territory is nineteen thirty-four. 

They should make up. But they won’t. 


Along lines of communication to my room 

from porcelain posts, boring the loud training 

under cold sheets, I listened. 

Hoping yet not hoping the network was adequate 

and in the late morning, startled to the sound of it, 

I said ‘you’re going to regret saying that’, 

and began to smell of bread in a sink. 








SJ Fowler is a writer, poet and performer who lives in London. http://www.stevenjfowler.com


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