Issue 5: Oliver Dixon

From TIME AND MOTION STUDIES

I
To a Plane-tree, Queen’s Park Gardens

Diminished in bearing, patchy,

inclined to stoop, you resemble nothing

so much as these drawn, shrunken women

who huddle beneath you, downing cans; from whom

everything is falling slowly away.

II

Subjected

        to the dense clamour

  these starlings send up

     in mobbing

the haggard oak –

        they re-leaf

its stark armature

               a half-season soon

you’d swear –

     he began

            to have a mind

for a more

          indelicate

rhetoric –

III

Where they’ve demolished

half a terrace, a wall

bares etiolated

                               paisley-flock

unaltered since

                             ’74; trace

of a family history

                              briefly extant

before

the wrecking-ball

                             pendulums

back

                into play –

VI
Testimony

We used

three sieves

to filter the ashes,

to sift out

the bone-shards

and resistant

teeth;

to break down

the residue

to a flour-soft

dust

fine enough

to fertilise

their rose-

garden.

VII

Bore the rushed brunt

of a bumper, that jay

did, spreadeagled yesterday

on the wet pavement,

his brutal arrest

granting this much by way

of bequest:

our unforeseen view

of tiny wing-feathers’

iridescent blue.

IX
Locu

      i)

Does gull’s harsh diphthong

     creak like an unoiled see-saw

or vice versa?

      ii)

Proof he’s dyslexic:

     I find I hAT bAb felt-tipped

behind his bedroom door

      iv)

Leaves swept from wet pavings

        print after-blurs of themselves;

ghostly negatives

X

Crack-willows, silvering like water

as the wind veers

through; unbridled outgrowths

of lilac:

                     they’ve all

but overtaken the tenantless

canal-boat, its flaky name

just visible:

GIPSY WANDERER

XI
Involuntary Memory

Alas, the old edition of ‘The Love Poems of Vidyapati’

         I was planning to buy and give to you

has the same musty smell as the porn magazines

I would find in the woods aged fifteen or sixteen

           and secretly abuse myself to.

XII
Girl at Party

Bonily immobile,

you seemed only an easel

set up

                by the window,

                                            your wide face

the preparatory sketch

for a portrait,

                                  an outline

that needed

                             fleshing

XIII

In Avondale Park

the cottonwood trees

snow their seedy down

until the grass

lies white and woollen, sunlight

a-hover with fluff:

windfall of urban manna

Oliver Dixon is a poet and writer based in west London whose poems and reviews have appeared in PN Review, The Wolf, Frogmore Papers and Nth Position. He runs the literary blog Ictus. His day-job is as a college lecturer working with students with learning disabilities.

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