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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