Issue 16: Iain Rowley
Aquadural
‘Why leave the sea? To carry a gift – the gift of life. But it is to the earth that you preach fidelity. And forgetfulness of your birth.’ — Luce Irigaray, Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche
bullet point pressing
for consent to be distant
surveyor contact
hydrophobic glass-eyeing
take a little reed
be taken into high block
click dura mater
outside the potential space
cracked-crazed paradise
stone from sharp insolation
surveyor measures
the moral ground on the hoof
inflamed horse’s tail
forget the Hippocrene
subjective dry mouth
plucking ropey saliva
rotten egg ructus
with his stagnant projections
O daughter that was
a cautionary account
transition into
a watery stage ‘aah’ing
covers vestibule
against grave linear speed
joint decompression
minimal striated tone
still shudder to think
Mnemosyne must preserve
an after-image
bubbling on the smooth surface
an oval window
ruptured by naval patrols
carefully balanced
reproductive budgets shot
belly burial
pit for aerojet agents
perchlorate short shelf
life carrying miscarriage
entertain only
the impossibility
of a driving on
without a trace of damage
to work for ending
its accumulation
hydrostatic force
evenly distributed
no crushing blood tide
or being engrossed
in a mystique of the land
but closeness to an
element spread before the
synthesis of stars
what breath is this O daughter
guide her alongside
dorsal thermoregulate
for another’s sake
anticipate impressions
of lipophilic
toxic crystals cord exposed
in Watsu cradle
ripples across fretless neck
fibrous strings buzzing
hard data dioritic
aspiration gives
in to supple rebonding
geo-infancy
double notes of a warbler
no place certainty
splash-happy syncopations
in Erewash Meadows
before the diversity
of native contents
would succumb to a species
of domination
strain to rest assure
what seems terminable is
kept in bearable
range of a newfound expanse
for merchant service
her substance keel-hauled and flogged
the numskull master
will taste his own medicine
I wear a mop wig
judgement inflicts upon him
the ‘sweat’ deck-jigging
we jab his nates with pen-knives
IV lines will change
into grape-vines through airs of
Orthian ardour
dropout spontis wage a war
black flags by free ports
set sail for sources of wealth
beyond the fat years
strip gourmets of Kobe beef
from cows emptied out
by special forms of massage
raid privation pools
built in the banks of the spree
don’t spend infinity
in the pinch of decrees to
pipe down bottle-feed
on premium fleshy pink
such a fancy price
imagination avails
itself of the lost
at first sight a white speck
scatters the sunlight
the total shape too far gone
mimesis reflex
make ventral arch stretch the tongue
pulse conducted through
steadily rising contours
of a signature
I can’t really remark on
scent of cassia
generated as received
where there is desert
a caravan passes through
apparitional
leaving signs obstructive tribes
can’t identify
runoff percolates into
underground cisterns
stored for serving points of flight
finding the Fertile Crescent
raises the venous
return clearing waste products
palms lapping softly
against slightly parted thighs
and what high relief
what face is this O daughter
in the tympanum
dolphins’ beaks meeting
above the veil and waved hair
from a multi-leaved
acanthus cup comes a head
and winged torso
dive in vagus-inspired
pre-articulate
know the solution hitting
the back of the throat
can’t make any inroads through
amniotic density
Iain Rowley is a poet and essayist with a particular interest in Modernist and contemporary innovative aesthetics, Marxist-feminist and new materialist currents of thought, and figurations of the body that contest technocratic governance. His work has recently been published in Intercapillary Space, and another poem is forthcoming in Tears in the Fence 64.
Copyright © 2016 by Iain Rowley, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
