Issue 18: Ed Luker
(Tom Raworth Memorial)

FOUR POEMS IN MEMORY OF TOM RAWORTH

Under a bower

                the head rests on moist earth

 wetted folds in the neck evading sky

                light flashes through blades

the blaze of warming heat in haze

                a jubilancy, a shimmer,

                        a tremblant stress

of this rest drawn from the fresh dawn

as the sounds of words prick the ear

                 the clearing of light

                 pulled from the din

Ruminant,

                           in the midday sun

merrily I squander myself

        drunk on borrowed time

as sheets of pollen lodge

        in nostrils and on tips

across planes of separate interest

                            the twitch and sniffle

                                         of seasonal joy

each sneezes their own regard

At the close

                           of the day

      numbers

                           fall

      from the sky

      exit currency

burning a decimal point

      through the solid earth

you know this

                           have seen it

       sinkholes

                           thirty feet deep

what we call collapse

This ground beneath us

shifts in its constant

as we traverse the rise and fall

calling out the names

for those who have escaped us

we bring our flesh to our memories

press our memories into flesh

tied to a tiring expenditure

but still, effervescent in the crest of life

it’s the curvature of this skin

lost again in that slippage

a heart’s flutter at finger tips

a tripping spectral flash within

Ed Luker is a poet and a writer. He is the author of Peak Return (Shit Valley Press, 2014), Headlost (RIVET. Press, 2014) and The Sea Together (Materials Press, 2016). He is currently working on a long prose-poem on detainment and attainment called Universal Attainment Centre.

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