Issue 33: Joseph Minden

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.

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