Issue 23: Patricia Farrell

from Handshoe

          (after Max Klinger Ein Handschuh (Paraphrase on the finding of a glove))


this is

a game of chance  

throwing the ice

into the air


and watching it fall  

and for your next

impossible trick  

you are angling to


catch it in the glass  

holding your breath

for an instant

at the event horizon  


skating perfectly

on the meniscus  

but as you follow the trajectory  

the glass performs


a topological manoeuvre  

flattening and freezing

as you hit the surface  

opening a hairline crack  


can’t know where you is  

a fissure in the think  

how is it happening

at this end of the room  


sure sure

you were

echoglossolaling

at the other  


or does this is

in a beginning  

an heteronomous

categorical imperative


of justice  

to speak

the unthinkable

next move  


wobbling super-saturated  

on its catastrophic edge  

it all makes

too much sense  


*


as if you were a poet  

nonsense  

using a multiplicity

of devices


to structure

your surface-making tools  

are these the facts

that poets like  


like that handshake

was a challenge  

juxta enjambement

and position


of the upward downward slopes  

repetition and changes of the mixture  

spreading the earth

and doing the loopholes  


so work

you superficial bastard  

you are now the author

of a personal quote form  


and it is on the front line  

and are you trying

to break this

without separating  


it’s an image   

speaking with the borders  

celebrating this

occasional courtship  


this pagan failure  

and who

would read the next job  

a different


congenital frequency

which is where  

without permission  

there is a sudden


sharp noise  

the voice breaks 

is it a crack down  

or is it cracking-up  


crack on  

was that a joke  

humour is the

holy of the


wholly holey surface   

the sound of symbols  

re-

sounding    


*


a stone hits the window  

and you cracked your tooth as you fell  

something you slightly non-specifically  

broke  


to reach what was inside  

just a moment  

a small resounding moment

of perversion  


a turning aside of itself  

but contrariwise you see  

to crack means

finding a solution  


so blind drunk

you can’t

see anything  

despite


intensely

intimate

interrogation  

eggs into the mixing bowl  


the lightning is not cracking   

no up  

you’re on the floor  

at the frontier  


excellent  

where the earthquake

cracked the walls

and the roof collapsed  


enciphering

thin lines and narrow spaces  

tracing and marking down

a translation


from chance to skilful  

light and deft  

dancing delicate  

rolling through


beyond the dead-end of the flaw  

which way will you fold your soul  

performing acts of perverse

versity  


*


you need

a bargaining chip for gaps  

light the conceptual stunts  

transform the devices  


skip the delay  

configure the melting ice  

here are the facts

you have not  


you are not  

all here  

but listen  

how pretty  


now   

a moment of silence  

or to turn your head  

the force so cold  


crack  

come back  

now  

small  


and vast  

calling  

calling it an accident  

an instant  


epic  

poetic  

force flashing  

to get the last word  


the first would help  

the excursion terminated  

or run forever

after the penultimate drink

Patricia Farrell is a poet and visual artist. She has collaborated with other writers and artists, most notably Robert Sheppard, as well as the installation artist Jivan Astfalck, on the project B*twixst, exhibited in Birmingham, Portsmouth and Cologne, and A Space Completely Filled with Matter with the dancer, Jennifer Cobbing. Her collection, The Zechstein Sea, was published by Shearsman in 2013 and her latest publication is High Cut: My Model of No Criteria (Leafe Press 2018). She completed a PhD thesis in 2011 on poetic artifice in philosophical writing.


Copyright © 2019 by Patricia Farrell, 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.