Issue 19: Jonathan Catherall
Insect
the insects came whirring
only one in a suit and by biofeedback can we
teach teenagers to control their emotions?
you alight on this one verb and suck
1. cut into sections
established the border there our own
aftertaste of what’s been voided
and rotting fruit I wish
you’d be more exact exacting
you after all are human a fragrant
summery pudding the light
is multiple bifurcation
is your middle name
2. notched
engraved in the distance
there’s a writhing to maintain
where each segment articulates
pulse stutter or nociceptor
response forming into curlicues
or other lures so that the brush
against cloth and abscond
with a second thought
3. adapt
a motion-sensor following a light-track
glow-w and retracing the leaves
behind a tremor and back formation
of the mathematical of the
nervework the incorporation
of written materials shavings and rinds
the loose chewed news a-flutter
and reset permission to calculate
the series and reset to within an inch
of your life going back over going
back over going over uneven territory
avoiding the dip after lunch
going over legs waving befuddled hippo-
campus legscrabble perhaps
it was that rose-delicate prawn I ate?
4. a brand new day
alight on a finger or finger a palm or shoulder
over a thousand times our own weight
righting writing a rout do we really
have to go over this again? we’ve already
or already gone over this ground this oscillation
this subject to new information a working
mandible hypothesis froth over a palpable
absorption itself protrusion again an overextension rerouting
itself protrusion of grubbing mouth spaces
clicking selective electric reiteration
a generation slick with fruiting and overwriting
5. recovery
under a resounding shield the fused elytra there is no getting past
that unfamiliar word an emotion kept in a shoebox surviving
nuclear or scraps living on a figment leaf or a pierced jar
rustles in the undergrowth I was constructing an elaborate
hide if you can I’m a keen armature photographer
a sheathed shapely a much-applauded chitinous segment
from behind the blood curtain a thief casing the joint
6. those eyes
gives way to pathos or blinding
hail of noise in the channel
gruesome the way that they
between the soft material
of the neck and the hard
material of the head & its insistent
opening jetblackness
to an unknown
consoles motorised jaw governance
the signal failure of this or this
to bring any nectar-drunk
with a wingspan of six feet
& the revolving excess of stimuli
Jonathan Catherall has published poems in Datableed, 3AM, Tears in the Fence, Envoi, Visual Verse, and The Frogmore Papers. He has performed his work at Caplet, Words & Jazz, and in the spontaneous poetry/art collaboration event Erratic Scores; and has reviewed for The Literateur and The Wolf. He works for the Wellcome Trust supporting public engagement with science.
