Issue 25: Nia Davies and Amy McCauley
from Ooze Disco
Lithicly then across the field, the oil field, the open field, the way a field rather than a forest, the way a field has no shelter and is meant to be plundered but planted the way a field of birch is now a field of oil deposits and now and now you walk or maybe don’t need to walk when a car conveys you to the local sainsburys and here, here the security guard who uses the word ‘snatch’ for cunt.
errant in the nethery
under the limes
the elms the sycamores
savage elm
savage egg
savage elm savage egg
It’s quite impossible to say what An might be because such a zone doesn’t stay still. An oozes. Can be here for a second and then be gone. Can be held in common but each of us lives An differently.
Now for instance. An searches Da’s bookshelf for something to read. He owns two copies of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell and the complete works of George Orwell. An looks for Orwell’s ‘England Your England’ and finds it in an old Penguin paperback. The year ’84 has been inscribed on the inside cover. It is a well-thumbed copy but sheds no light on Da’s inscrutable personality. An will have to keep digging.
What is it you seek?
Not dialogue, simply action
Walking by the river An fights the urge to leap because. The drag of it. Where will it end? The gaping mouth of the humber. And then––
Silt, mud, fry, parr
Rippling muscles and trestle tables
On arrival at the house, built in the 1990s, you are alarmed to find there is no desk or table to sit at. No place to put the computer.
You walk around with a notebook. Worry about the notebook as a site of dissipation, a site of lost potential. There is dissipation (vague) happening every minute and why do we grieve it constantly this loss of energy (energy being another vague word).
Pre-Anglo, semi-Anglo
Anglo in-spite-of Anglo
It’s true. An wants a love-relation but is incapable of seeing it through. Too afraid in every fibre of another’s tenderness or commitment. The ample pastures of another’s Teimlad. An longs to be looked after like a child. But wants to come and go without conditions of sexual or emotional fidelity.
O to be loved without demands or questions!
An dances naked in the temporal space marked jouissance. Declares their body an independent state with open borders. Refuge is sought by an international consort. They snaffle a meal off An’s body. The light touch of chopsticks makes them quiver. The diners pour sake into An’s navel and dip their heads to drink. Alle Menschen werden Brüder!
An considers what it is to be a human table / drinking vessel / homo polyamorous. Performs ‘Ode to Joy’ as a polyamorous pastoral ritual. There is a misunderstanding about language.
Who studies whom?
Difficult to say
Next to the house in Coelbren is a pond with Canada Geese, Guinea fowl, Chickens, Mallard and other waterfowl. This was previously common land but a neighbour fenced it in. Now is it his or is it now not his? What if An steals a goose from the commons? What would they do with it? The geese are quite large.
Agape for maps/language
Philia for uncle leaving
Eros for the touch of ily ily
Oozey (oozey) kinship
Later that very same but adjacent moment you feel a keen desire to place splayed fingers in another’s tumbling hair. What’s so very good anyway about being loved six ways? So much regularity like standing by the mill pond in a novel. Is it appealing? To be gently and publicly hardened as a penis or a road-tossed pheasant entering its final throes? Six possible tea cups for six possible arousals?
Huge UKIP flags flutter in the flattened east. The Moors plateau twinkle under a weird open bright light in the north. To the west many campers with bothered brows and sheep branded tea-towels. To the south the self-obsessed de-dahs, stencilled Hendo’s insignia everywhere, including An’s breastbone.
The time of eros: Maman/mamgu
Kinship up the spout
Storge for what holds us together
Nia Davies (b. 1984) grew up in Sheffield, studied at Sussex University and is now based in Swansea. From 2014 to 2019 she was editor of Poetry Wales. Her publications include Then Spree (2012, Salt), Çekoslovakyalilastiramadiklarimizdanmisiniz or LONG WORDS (2015, Boiled String) All Fours (2017, Bloodaxe), England (2017, Crater), Interversions (2018, Poetrywalla) with the Kannada poet Mamta Sagar, Key Blank (2018, LPB) and Ooze Disco co-written with Amy McCauley, forthcoming. She has worked on several intercultural projects including Literature Across Frontiers and is currently researching poetry and ritual at Salford University.
Amy McCauley is a writer, performer and artist. Her publications include a reimagining of the Oedipus myth called Oedipa (Guillemot Press, 2018), a twenty-four stanza documentary poem called 24/7 Brexitland (No Matter Press, 2020) and Propositions, a fragmentary text exploring desire and the limits of its articulation (Monitor Books, 2020).
Copyright © 2021 by Nia Davies and Amy McCauley, 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.
