Issue 1: Chris Jones
Cells 1
The ultrasound gleans
rib-light and coral fingers;
your heart a quick fish.
Cells 2
Then I cut my thumb
and the bowl blooms poppy heads
blown with oxygen.
Cells 3
A chrysalis dreams
of yellow petaled sun-flares
arcing through darkness.
Cells 4
We lived on berries,
rabbits, thaw-water, the month
of the explosions.
Cells 5
News of the virus
blew eastwards as starlings swerved
and shimmered at dusk.
Cells 6
Tender to the end,
you squeeze my heart, sopping blood
in a pickling jar.
Cells 7
This diver is breath
and muscle, her hips turn foam,
her fingers ripple.
Cells 8
Last correspondence:
three pitted, friable scabs
in see-through packets.
Cells 9
The x-ray reveals
a fine snow across my lungs.
Catch how my breath rasps.
Cells 10
Dewfall, a morning
of webs quivering clotheslines:
late summer longhand.
Cells 11
Redwoods survive fires
the way we’d like to outlive
pain: old heart, new skin.
Cells 12
This soft, dark planet
spins slower round my body
as I near forty.
The sequence of haikus responds to watercolours painted by Paul Evans. You can read about the exhibition (it was shown at the Cuploa Gallery last year and a version of it will be shown in Scunthorpe's Art Centre later in the year) - on Chris Jones' website (www.chris-jones.org.uk)
Chris Jones teaches creative writing at Sheffield Hallam University. His first full-length collection, The Safe House, appeared with Shoestring Press. The sequence, Miniatures, appeared with Longbarrow Press in November 2007.
