Issue 8: Iain Britton
bloody-minded
torn mugshots / / hang by folds
a mummified genie
(half unwrapped) smirks
the shop is in ruins
and a goat herd clatters on the trot to be milked
##
upside down
over capitalization
enables homes to be quilted into streets
movies for adults
in Aegean technicolour
screen nightly
biographies
alive in plaster sky-dive
from God’s right finger
and onlookers
crane their necks
gobble anything that’s going
like manna from high places
##
worn antiquity
shows its flakes a wooden horse
has been wheeled in for an all-expenses-paid
escape for those who want it
the sun is elsewhere being argumentative
resistant to change / bloody-minded
the shop is in ruins
##
going nomadic
is an excuse
for reviving superstitions
talking to oneself / / gesticulating wildly
burning hard-earned sacrifices
on rock piles in the desert
earmarked for heavenly delights
1
she tramples on field coordinates
on paths earmarked for urbanised heavenly delights
she lights up a system of caves
(the bats long gone)
it seems intrusive
but generational habits still persist
a crawling upwards
is still the only way out
2
I’ve written my version of events
(in triplicate this morning) of suddenly last summer
I’ve watered down my part
to a spectral observation
she the red-wrapped drama queen licks
an ice cream
hugs local panoramas
talks me through pornographic slideshows
through guest lists
drinking from the same glass
she holds me up to airborne nuances
3
her favourite people
repeat
good-byes / / hellos
a kind of primal saturation
can be read into what we hope for
Oystercatcher Press published Iain Britton’s third poetry collection in 2009. Kilmog Press published his fourth in 2010. The Red Ceilings Press published an ebook Ten Poems last year and an Argotist Ebook songlines has come online this year. A forthcoming full collection titled druidic approaches is due out imminently with Lapwing Publications. He also has a pamphlet from Like This Press due out in August, and Beard of Bees (US) and Greendoor Publishing will be publishing chapbooks soon.
