Issue 25: Dominic Leonard
A motorway is a very strong wind
We remember it differently, I know, but in my version
You couldn’t bear this green emergency for long. Ambled
Dreamlike into a painting a painting and slid back out of it
Like a wet horse, but in it no fault, either or away, no,
I know. Still life with you, away. A river can plead it can;
You lied about this too and I remember it, remember you
Going out into the empty fields. You cannot leave a place
If you know where you are going. No why, but since,
Either it. Well then. Ambled dreamlike along and out,
A blue dismantling, breaking bottles on the bedside as you
Went, the cold so sharp it felt arranged. In circles. On the hills.
I want you to feel this but know nothing, I do not want
You to know I want you to feel. To feel it. Stop. Get out. So
What. I can bear it but not for long, I do not encourage
Courage in fact it is the last thing I encourage. A broken door
Handle, the audio of the shipwreck, buried also, in that house,
A crypt with all the pleasure gouged out of it and sewn shut.
I remember it differently. So I bring it back a different way.
I remember what lies sweetly on a picture, what runs away,
What glances back. If I wait for you, I will do it out here.
Drinking this lemony backwater. I will stay in these clothes.
Plates and furniture were broken, it happened
It happened. To be believed I had to make
My days measurable, and since doubt is an
Open fling, here is what was conclusive: a man
I did not know, shaking the morning out
Like an ice-tray, that this came first, and then
The next, and then. As if the damage could be
Scraped off so easily, as if a report so crisply
Linear could be so flawed, a realisation folding
Through the blood in green sheets. The water
At that hour was not like water, the sentences
Uncertain, the beasts wild; but there, then,
In that terrible gulping cavern, I let you in
On a secret: I never believed you. And I have been
The same now for a long time. I have no love left
For secrecy, the wicked fucking work of it—
Doubt is an open fling, a wet riddle, a dark
Cloud dark cloud, happened it happened:
That fingers were crushed into wood and memory
Blocked up in my pores like cubes of salt.
That the rain is now, glass curtains of it.
Coming home late from a stoning.
Putting your coat up on the rack,
Making coffee. Closing the door.
What were you saying, something
About parallax; colours as vibrations,
As distances that collect pain, as ways
To put back together. What was taken.
Apart. Step backwards until you see it,
Until the lines join: the secret’s perilous
Sway between failure (known) and
Success (not-known but not known to
Be not-known). And, lastly, the facts:
You said you never would but you did.
You always said there wasn’t but there was.
You said you said it but you had not.
By the time I say this I will have said it.
And why would I say something twice.
If something is true how do you wash it
Away. How do you know if something
Is true until you have washed it away.
We said we said it but did we, did we.
Dominic Leonard’s writing can be found in Poetry London, PN Review, Pain, the TLS and elsewhere. His pamphlet, love, bring myself (Broken Sleep, 2019), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and in 2019 he received an Eric Gregory Award. He lives and teaches in London.
Copyright © 2020 by Dominic Leonard, 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.
