Issue 5: Vidyan Ravinthiran
A Boy Called It
1.
What is it, you ask me? I do not know what it is: I know
there are times with you
when it feels
anything could be said or done: it is too much
when salt is poured on the slug
it turns to nothing: when I hear your even
breathing
more even and deep than anything
we could do or say
I turn to nothing: it occurs to me
as snowflakes hit the river
it is one way of disappearing
2.
It is also a film
with a horrible clown in it
a group of children grow up
get back together: but the thing is
is the monster
is a guarantee
that when decades later we
find each other
aged as if by latex
it will be the same people
groping
through a dark wood
3.
A boy called it: everything in him
wanted to run
so he did: when he came
to the centre of power
designed to be filmed
from all angles
to look plausible
in HD
he palmed the glyph: looked at that blank
space: the reptile’s head
the skull crowned with flies
till it shone
4.
From the footprints by the window
I extrude
the killer
as a late beam of sun
pushes a line of black
out of a pebble
as that line turns slowly
becomes
a clock
I will have it
all wrapped up
by sundown
5.
There were little bows
all over her lingerie
you couldn’t untie
I
want it
she said
but it’s only
decorative
6.
Wondering what it looked like: smelt like: felt like
you walked round the perimeter
made guesses in the shadows: this also
was pleasurable
at midnight
the wind ruffled the cordons
searchlights caressed the waste
repeating
with soft
urgency
it
started to sing
Vidyan Ravinthiran is a lecturer at Balliol College, Oxford. His pamphlet, ‘At Home or Nowhere’, was published in 2008 by Tall-Lighthouse; other poems were anthologised this year in Joining Music With Reason (Waywiser Press) and have appeared or are forthcoming in Magma, Poetry Review, The North, The Times Literary Supplement, The Oxonian Review, Ambit, Agenda, Stand, Horizon Review, Poetry Wales and Smiths Knoll.
