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.

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