Issue 10: Beau Hopkins
From SONNETS FROM B TO A
They seemed Others, but are We
– TRAHERNE
Can’t See So Well
What I live in: you, us, and ALL TIME. Also
my abandonment to blindness and with that
a new, lush definition. Now watch my mouth
give breath, riding the static
ion-flustered curve that comets from the bed:
a universe jailed in imagination –
the fungible nature of my ‘just’ response
REAL, as required. So it’s true: parabolas stroke
our cross-nine equation silkwork to form
co-efficients for you ‘n’ me. But my wish
is for you only: because I know
nothing really & want EVERYTHING
now to be personal, ‘just right’ and touchable
like you in the dirty & lovely morning light.
Wakey Wakey
O SUN. Thy heat is such a nice alarm,
ahem-ing so politely on the skin.
And when it jigs, I feel it dance and burn
deep in the blood, all wavy & alive with a
wild whiteness. Eyes, go back in. I want to feel
when the heartbeats come, barely touching,
her leaf-movements like little, awkward falls
in silence, shaking out the hush of our
bedsit-cum-paradise.
Yeah but God, ignore all that crap.
I used to impress you. Now all my skill
lingers & goes cold, dimming like the ceiling light.
But still I am, even futuring every
thing, present to you, you & in you.
And Then A Trial
Now to be decided: by a judge; PROOF, & pro-
cess of recess seeking (shall we say)
leave before flight? Thank you m’lud. Or otherwise
in principle grounded? Ah but that’s so
ab initio, so grown dim, so ab-
dicated & what the hell is this? I feel no
contact in the touch, no touch
in my nameless, blindly named, naked
HUNGER. Dressed you who did then?
Tell me now, now it is not.
O life. Press & abuse this
button. Pray out: out of never; out of what;
what I am & out of all other
things like love’s seasons as the green year rounds.
Old Draff, New Draff
What I live in: you, us & all time – a cloud
scudding & shoved by time, us the shadow.
Huh. I see the garage door is shut
& the trees have ground to a halt. You could say
all time’s just a matter of time, of course, so stop
rehearse, or do what you like, I’ll never stop
as you creep back to bed from the window
all frigid with your dream. And the sheets,
like the moon you rode in on,
icy & stiff. One more … what? Lip, eye, a burning word?
No. Just buck up again & admire it –
nobody, I mean nobody at all –
night’s odd like that: it comes, like understanding
sudden to the heart & jars us with its stars.
Beau Hopkins is studying for a PhD on late-modernist British poetry at the University of East Anglia.
