Embedded Files
Dawn
Chest panorama:
morning mist is
waking hair,
breath not working.
Dark verticals
are emaciated
guards. The organisation
is beyond the gates
with its cherry picker,
inhuman inaccuracy,
swathes of red eyes.
Reality mortal,
dream burns or
is barricaded.
The Wind
And mole comes
force-facing
through mid-evening’s
miniature house,
a shade below
the willow’s
shaken nodding.
Petals or boats,
same impassive
direction. Trace,
unwearable mask.
Children smash
on the field
of raw converts.
One Screw Into Expanding Foam
A face rising
like submarine
light up
the stairwell,
which is a
well. You
just need to be
let down.
I crouched
in the
corner of
time passing,
a boy chesting
a shame eye.
Charing
Wet treetops fall
away, mayfly static,
columnthreads,
stuttering down
to land in
thought, settle
in a fragrant field
in Kent, above
the M20. Here
you come rising,
lorrybone, Iris,
rising then dissolving
in the non-substance
of settling mist.
Juturna
As the eyelid
lifts, the eye
inverts and what
is found there
is the exit
wound, his back
packed with raw
dirt. Bows clatter
on the plinth;
a head touches
the stars. Grief,
its mouth like
sacked shoulders,
rivers for ever.
Winnowing
Like a memory
from before shores,
shadows in
ship-dreaming
chariots scud
over fields,
shamming the
cloud-ripening
wind. See-far
clouds wink.
Syllable apples
fall, unseeable,
from the boathouse
mouths of ploughmen.
Joseph Minden is a poet and teacher based in Brighton. His new book, Answerlands, is due out later this year.
Copyright © 2025 by Joseph Minden, 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
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