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Fingerprints

and

Other Traces
Poetry from Lancashire and Cumbria

Deborah Swift
Martyn Halsall
Mark Carson
Maya Chowdhry
Emma McGordon
005 Click here to open the book
Contents
Foreword 3
Deborah Swift
Boots on the Moon 5
The Stone Rubbing 6
Cairn 7
Self-portrait with Binoculars 8
Obituary 9
Martyn Halsall
Scalpay 11
Legend 12
Blackthorn 13
Rembrandt’s Sandwich 14
Mark Carson
Cat’arsis 16
Per Ardua ad Nauseam 17
Offshore System Designer makes Dodgy Decision 19
Maya Chowdhry
Barter 21
Kali Mirchi 22
been sprouts 23
Genderality 24
Emma McGordon
Death at 22 from a Curable Disease 28
Gutter-Witch 30
Go Forward Blue Black Zac 32
Go Back
This edition published in Great Britain by Flaxbooks,
26 Sun Street, Lancaster, LA1 1EW. Tel 01524 62166.
www.litfest.org

All works © their respective authors


Fingerprints and Other Traces (flax005) © Flaxbooks

All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored


in a retrieval system, or transmitted, by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher
and individual creators.

Flaxbooks is the publishing imprint of Litfest.


Lancaster and District Festival Ltd trading as Litfest.
Registered in England
Company Number: 1494221
Charity Number: 510670

Editor: Sarah Hymas


Design and layout: Martin Chester at Litfest
Photography: Jonathan Bean

Contents
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2
Foreword
I knew Flax books would have no shortage of poets for its second digital anthology, but
not how astonishingly various their writing would be.
Although the five poets whose work is sampled here could hardly write more differently
from each other, they do have something in common. All engage with surprising and
often challenging subject matter – and invent ways of writing to handle it. Coulombs
and van de Graff not the stuff of poems? They are with Mark Carson’s light touch.
So are towfishes and urethane in tougher poems about the relentlessness of working
at sea. His lights and darks are elegantly fused in ‘Offshore System Designer makes
Dodgy Decision’.
Maya Chowdhry loves words too, her title ‘Genderality’ telling you she’s making a risky
poem about gender identity. Skilfully, she allows language to drive the poem: ‘we’re
crossing over, under / cover’. Oh yes, she does write one poem about a more ‘usual’
subject matter, the end of a relationship – but you’ll never have come across anything
quite so inventive as her ‘been-sprouts’.
There’s a change of pace with Martyn Halsall’s writing: he draws you into a growing
stillness and silence until you can hear music ‘keyed to the breeze’. A poem in which he
recalls being told about making a blackthorn staff builds and intensifies, then quietly
unravels in its final couplet.
Emma McGordon uses rhythm and repetition as an engine for fast-moving poems that
confront urban life and alienation. Her shifts of perspective cleverly keep you inside the
poem, and may leave you, like her, ‘Drawn / To the man who street cleans / Last night’s
screams’.
Contents
The moon, the future, the past – these are some of the places Deborah Swift takes us, not
Go Forward as abstract ideas, but with vivid and shapely writing to make them tangible, her ‘fingers
Go Back

3
absorbed in the marks’. There’s a particularly fine ending to her ‘Boots on the Moon’.
And that’s another thing these five poets have in common – an ability to deliver last lines
that leave you savouring the poem. And wanting more.
Jane Routh
Deborah Swift
Boots on the Moon 5
The Stone Rubbing 6
Cairn 7
Self-portrait with Binoculars 8
Obituary 9

Contents Hear Deborah read


Boots on the Moon
Go Forward
Go Back Read Deborah’s Profile

4
Boots on the Moon
They’re still up there, size nine-and-a-half,
medium – where micro-meteoroids
swirl like milk in a washbowl of ink.
The boots stand nights colder than the black
silk skin in an Eskimo’s borehole.
Silicon is unstable in the gases exhalation,
so the soles crumble in their own footprints.
Their buckles have fallen away, and glint,
float silvery against the pock-marked crust.
Grey sandstorms wear the man-made fibres thin;

w i f t threads of polyester detach themselves,

hS
glow softly as they sashay into space.

b o r a In their linings, yellow plastic bladders

De
designed to protect and cushion the foot,
encapsulate the 1960’s breath.
The rock samples are calibrated, boots
left where they stand, their precise weight
in rocks, carried home barefoot.
The air bends, quivers in the boom
of the shuttle’s returning velocity;
the men begin to plummet, stretching
toes through zero gravity to terra firma.
A shoemaker in Delaware inhales, sees
Contents the shuttle break the waves, looks up at night
Go Forward to where his outbreath hangs, left behind
in the yellow stomachs of their footfalls.
Go Back

5
The Stone Rubbing
I hold the film of paper over the stone
as she rubs in the paste of pearly graphite.
A shoal of fish bloom from the white space, then dart away
under silvery dust. The paper pecks in the wind; from above
the marbling of shadows, a flock of birds
calling.

The blue sleeve of her raincoat is bruised black


from rubbing, kneading other ages into here and now.
The sandstone blushes under her lead caress.

w i f t Her gold hair blows; a Midas in reverse, as she tells me

hS
how Winifred Nicholson teased out the mysterious braille,

b o r a her hands blackened rain-clouds

De
drifting.

The cup and rings won’t come,


reluctant to be lured into a flutter of paper.
Fixed in hard crag, the pebble-in-a-pond circles
have sat in the same question for centuries. She kneels,
fingers absorbed in the marks – axe tracks, old grooves
and faint trails – shoals and flocks
following.

Contents
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6
Cairn
From the top, the town is a crust of grey
almost pocketed by the valley.

A place can diminish, a man grow


god-like in this ice-floe of the sky.

Someone placed a single stone,


to own the hill before the others came.

The cairn is full of holes and ragged,

w i f t choosing for itself a shape to trap the rain.

o r a hS We place our stone, as though to mend it,

D e b but the pile is turning native; it rolls away.

Contents
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7
Self-portrait with Binoculars
My neck kowtows from side to side, lidless eyes
slew upwards into empty air: twin black holes stretched
over glassy depths, cupping miniature drifts of cloud.

The hawk swings, hangs from a thread of intent,


its shadow a dark moment poured on stubbled ground.
It scans the ochre cross-hatch, bleached by summer’s heat.

A mouse, terrified to stillness, dare not blink, suspends


the twitch of its heart in case the grass should quiver,

w i f t the claw hammer smash down into the red-yolked skull.

o r a hS A kite can see a rabbit break for home from half a mile,

D e b track the panicked ultraviolet stains of voles. The mouse runs.


My eyes swoop, lenses pull the topsy-turvy bird into the mind.

Contents
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8
Obituary
Fire is gone from the city, the notion of keeping a flame.
Combustion is hidden in chambers where fission and the leap
of spark are groomed by computers while we sleep. Pyrotechnics,
once a universal skill, are controlled by lever, pump and switch.
Wood and soft combustibles industrialized, to fossil fuel.

The cut trees, splitting as the lumber ripens in the sun,


and stacks of firewood gone. No one will raise the whetted axe
to hack along the grain, or grunt before they drag it back, to burn
in forge and hearth, or smell the sulphur when the match is lit,

w i f t feed it, coax it, watch the kindling spit, see pictures coat its yellow tongue.

o r a hS The city is fireproof – stainless steel and glass. A campfire’s savage,

D e b and fire in the mind – thermodynamics. Firepower streaks like fear


into the plugs, a lightning that astonishes, makes headlines when it strikes.
Ignition is turning a key in the car. No wool or tinder there to set alight,
and no one herds the flame to trap the deer, or damps it down to roast the meat.

Contents
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9
Martyn Halsall
Scalpay 11
Legend 12
Blackthorn 13
Rembrandt’s Sandwich 14

Contents Hear Martyn


read Blackthorn
Go Forward
Go Back Read Martyn’s Profile

10
Scalpay
You could sit out here all day; nothing would happen.
A tide might stain the slipway in the lochan,
gulls would glide over, trailing cries and shadows,
hard plait of gneiss and turf folds darken, lighten,
small waters smooth, then pattern to a salmon skin.

Sky would be kneaded, rise to spread a squall


creating a widening stipple on open water
and blot the painter’s sheet or punctuate
a line before it’s written, glaze a new stone

l s a ll as it’s lifted for setting, matt the colour scheme

Ha
of lichen along brown runnels of a worn tin roof.

a r tyn You could look at the rock and count four billion years,
M read of a range of mountains higher than
Andes or Himalaya, see these hills
worn low by this same rain, sense how it was
changed gradually each day; how it goes on.

Contents
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11
Legend
The rest had gone back up the track to the rented farm.
She stayed with her two daughters by the shore,
facing the island wide as a mother’s welcome.
Light gentled, oil lamp turned down in slow motion.

She heard the families’ voices fade, the odd


laugh left hanging, protest, squeal of a tease.
They watched far coastlines haze, tide gather evening,
sky’s glowed hearth settle to the ash of their driftwood fire.

lsall
Daughters drew stillness round them like their blankets,

Ha shared the watch with her; poised gulls, frill of tide,

tyn
last burn of sunlight coppering sharpened crags.

Mar One note. A ripple, scale, then tentative chords;


soon a tune fingered, floated, keyed to breeze.
A solo clarinettist far down the shore
riffing dusk; drift in woodsmoke; pipes knife-sharped
as oystercatchers always dressed for evening.
Each note stroked through hushed brush of folded water.

Do you know the story of Orpheus? They shook their heads.


He played a lute, a small harp you can hold.
Contents Its music made the world: trees, plants and flowers,
Go Forward those summits across the bay where clouds are rising.

Go Back

12
The children waited, quiet for once and listening
to the man who could summon nightfall out of music.
In a moment their mother would say: we’ll have to go now.
But not yet. Not till the world that he played was finished.
Blackthorn
Deep roots must come out whole to form the crown,
as he explained it. Wrenching the blackthorn free
meant digging round and deep, forming a pool
the sky reflected in as bog-flood filled it.

Each stem would make a staff, hacked straight, and seasoned


simply by waiting, letting sap breathe to air;
wood set in its own clearing, keen as steel.
Varnish would sheen it dark as a night of rain.

lsall
Using one could transform him: prophet, saint,

Ha in the old sense, walking, breaking fresh words like bread

tyn
to share their meaning, leaving on the bounce of peat

Mar no wound, as ground, healed of itself, bounced back.


But then he’d left them somewhere, bench or shed,
over the water; bags packed, driving away

Contents
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13
Rembrandt’s Sandwich
An artist sits in a café, watching a man.
Her eyes are drawn to the warming red of his coat,
the grateful way he cups his steaming drink,
worries at a sandwich; rabbi, chewing prayer.

The man is facing the past, in its winter light.


He could be someone known, or wearing a mask.
He is also watching: menu readers, shoppers,
prodigal children, loose, daughters and sons.

lsall
The artist begins to catch him in her pocket book;

Ha the angle of his mind, worn by remembering,

tyn
halter of his shoulders, phrasing of bearded jaw

Mar
as if rehearsing a speech he’d half forgotten,
small hopes in half-closed eyes, small hopes returning.
The artist jots notes: scarlets, pleats on rags.

She pauses, leaves a gap in front of the man,


a space for a tumbled body and bronzed, shaved head
recasting Rembrandt, who painted a father who watched
roads and crowds for so long, till holes in his hands
were refilled by his son’s return. Servants in shadow
wondering if it was better to smile, or marvel.
Contents
Go Forward Perhaps Rembrandt, reaching for bread, caught searching eyes,
recalled that story, set his crust aside. Drew.
Go Back

14
Mark Carson
Cat’arsis 16
Per Ardua ad Nauseam 17
Offshore System Designer makes Dodgy Decision 20

Contents Hear Mark


read Cat’arsis
Go Forward
Go Back Read Mark’s Profile

15
Cat’arsis
Cat fur was used for early electrostatics experiments,
before the Wimshurst Machine and the van de Graaff Generator.

With van de Graaff caress


I sweep cat-ions
to the tip of each tapered hair
stripping them free
charging her up
to a perilous puss-potential.

r s o n Lithe with gigavolts

k C a on dielectric paws

Mar
she fairly
crackles with coulombs.

Now, a deft approach


to the tufted tip
of her conductive ear.
Phuitt! Six thousand microns
of desiccated air
crack
and a whiff of ozone drifts away.

Contents
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16
Per Ardua ad Nauseam
The oceanographer’s motto: through difficulty until seasick

The door crashed back. Diesel roaring


a man falls stumbling,
shaking and grabbing my shoulder he shouts
yells by my ear,
slams out. The bulb burns orange.

The ship is uneasy: rolls hangs falls.


The brush in the toothglass topples, drops

s o n a relentless irregular beat.

Car
Dulled, behind my eyes the dazzle pulse

a r k slows to a sickly heartbeat.

M Up in the lab, squalor: ashtrays and cups, cans,


crusts and the hot smell of solder,
logbooks, litter, tooth-marked biros.
Tubes flare out the features of unshaven faces,
grey-blue from the shades.

Fathoms below, the towfish streams


sensors through layered Atlantic.
Five little pens scritch a trace on the scroll;
Contents one pen is still.
Go Forward
We go through the motions of hope,
Go Back

17
speed up, slow down,
high gain, low gain,
no gain.
We are kidding ourselves
that we can go on, go to bed,
get up like humans in daylight.

Decks down, in the alley sleep swills knee-deep in the doorways.


Drapes swing and the bosun snorts and rolls in his body,
wakes graceless, grunts his feet into slippers.

On deck, a grey lumping line is the dawn.


Pallid and chill my oilskin sweats cold.

s o n The crane coughs, bangs, kicks into life.

Car
As the winch grinds in,

a r k stub-ended nerveless my hands

M wrench the fairing,


catch the hook as it swings past my skull.

The towfish lies dripping on deck,


beached dolphin, its urethane bladder
extruded for surgery.
Breakfast is waiting below,
stewed tea and dried milk, greased bacon, scorched bread.

Later we’ll start, we’ll take it apart


Contents strip it down, clean it out,
Go Forward set it up for the next launch, the next tow,
next night watch, next shake in the dark.
Go Back

18
Offshore System Designer
makes Dodgy Decision
This engineer can’t get design approval.
He’s got to square the circle: compromise is oval –
he’ll smooth the seastate, shave the ship excursions,
massage the data to suppress the motions.

Believes his own distortions, thinks that he’s


determining the spectrum of the gales and seas.

n
Bends the criteria, and overrules

s o
Car
the codes of practice, guidance notes for fools.

a r k
M Canute could tell these self-deluding clowns
a thing or two about the tides, their ups and downs,
and winds, and waves, and where the surges reach
and when to move your sofa up the beach.

Contents
Go Forward
Go Back

19
Maya Chowdhry
Barter 22
Kali Mirchi 23
been sprouts 24
Genderality 25

Contents Hear Maya read


Go Forward Genderality
Go Back
Read Maya’s Profile

20
Barter
i swapped a purple sports bra for my first dress ready-made
didn’t recognise myself as the skirt skirted its mosaic mirrors
suburban Noida ringing in the mid-distance

in the second dress i was shrouded in a bluebell’s bell


the seams were seamless traced my spine despite the lack
of measurements she said she’d dreamed of me naked

i imagine her in the sports bra its lycra pinning her breasts
to her rib cage she told me she’d worn it in Defence Colony Bazaar

ry
acquiring haberdashery in small newspaper packets tied with string

d h
ow
a Ch
later i found a pink ribbon in an inside seam

May
an embroidered motif that grazed my navel
and wondered what it spelled

Contents
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21
Kali Mirchi
kali mirchi predicts the fall of nations
pursuing a palatable future
in the Malabar mangroves

her emerging flower-spike


ripening red climbing the coffee crop
blackened skin abraded to white
to pepper a jar of Patak’s

h r y
wd
kali mirchi (Punjabi for black pepper)

C h o
Ma ya

Contents
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22
been-sprouts
break-up from your girlfriend, discard longing into compost
you need to have prepared yourself the day before
pick over and remove any broken feelings:
fear, anger, hatred.
rinse in several changes of lukewarm water to remove
dust and anything left from the milling process
cover all with warm water and soak for twelve hours
put in a plastic bag that has been punched all over with holes
(you can do this with a fork).
place the bag in a sieve leaving the mouth of the bag open

h r y cover this opening with a tripled well-dampened tea towel.

wd
balance over a large bowl in a dark, draught-free place,

C h o some people use the unlit oven,

Ma ya or the area under their sinks.


drain
try balancing your needs with hers
drain
you will find other feelings have sprouted overnight
let warm water gush over again and again and clean
rub carefully, that which doesn’t float away
should be picked off.
repeat this process every four hours, never disturb
continue to do this for three to four days or until
Contents the beans have elongated
Go Forward this is the ideal process producing perfect sprouts
anything else will produce stunted results.
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23
at this point do not cover up,
place in the fridge
and all will stay healthy for three days.
Genderality
1978 aged thirteen / i wear a denim waistcoat /
khaki small-collared shirt
knotted with a black silk tie /
my mum refuses to leave the house / with me until i take the tie off /
i stuff it in my pocket and wear / an imaginary knot; centre-stage

scene one:
throw me a life
buoy sailor, we living
in sink or swim times;

h r y all mouth and no trousers

wd
getting thrown out the ladies

C h o for looking so sexy butch

Ma ya she’s a girl!
she’s a boi with a toy
denied admission to vanilla
she’s a girl
looking straight / through me

she’s all fired up on T


did i say she?
i mean he, it,
shit, we’re crossing over, under / cover
Contents agents for the gender divide
Go Forward becoming them and finding:
recipes for bombs
Go Back

24
measurements for inside leg
how to grow the hair / elsewhere
he’s a faery boi / should be a girl,
grew his hair and tucked his cock down
her inside leg
what a drag, not popular like the queens / not cultured
like the queers, something in-between the word-play
translator or impersonator
transgressor or impresser
test the line

scene two:
skirts don’t suit me, something about the cut,
the print, the way it hangs like abandoned washing

h r y grazing my knees, bellowing in the breeze

wd
an embarrassment / like the time I walked down

C h o market street with the back of it all tucked up in my knickers

Ma ya and I never knew / that I could wear genes


charity-shop retro, inherited from the underground
worn lives / gender uniforms on rails /
try them on for size / unwanted garments / on special offer /
shop-soiled
y change what you wear / to fit in with your x’s crowd
you still won’t gain entry / they’ll be wearing top man /
when you’re all tammy girl

scene three:
Contents on the street I wear one of my off-stage identities
Go Forward and an old lady says: ‘can you help me cross the road young man’
i readjust my sock / take my hands outta my pockets,
Go Back

25
grasp her arm, dodge the 6pm traffic
scene four:
i can rip-saw / use a lathe, make mortise, tenon and dovetail joints
‘tie your hair back’ the journey-man says / health and safety
i plane oak, wafer-thin curls peeling back to smooth contours, trace the years with
my index finger /
28 and still no sign of an identity: carpenter, film-maker, web-designer
activist, mentor, chairperson
gendered jobs / apply within

scene five:

h r y write an application / person specification:

wd
silver wisdom in her hair

C h o roses / spirals / celtic knots

Ma ya big / bouncy / braless / breasts /


stunt cunt flying open
four armed lesbian kali gender killer
this flavour is not available in other stores

Contents
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26
Emma McGordon
Death at 22 from a Curable Disease 29
Gutter-Witch 31
Blue Black Zac 33

Hear Emma read


Contents Gutter-Witch
Go Forward
Go Back Read Emma’s Profile

27
Death at 22 from a Curable Disease
Outside they will be getting married,
buying houses
deciding on tea-dipping biscuits.
Outside they will hold each other
until they squeeze the very life
from that which they cherish.
Outside all of this will be repeated in
18 or 15 or 20 years time.

Outside they will die young

r d o n and know little,

Go
and I will hear about this

a Mc as I pass through isles of supermarkets.


Outside they will smoke each other’s

Em m cigarettes and believe themselves to have lived


to live and to have life forever.

Outside they will not know of WH Auden,


Anne Sexton or Barry Patrick MacSweeney,
nor will they care to know.

Inside there will be two lights,


a radio, several books scattered,
Contents a half drunk lager, an empty coffee cup,
Go Forward a pen with chewed lid.

Go Back

28
Inside there will be no knowledge
of the latest eviction
or the care for the status of celebrity.
Inside four plates will be washed,
one to be used again tomorrow.
Inside there may be the anger of a young man,
although outside they will not feel
his wrath or dependability or envy
in the slightest.

r d o n Outside they will

Go
go blind in one eye

a Mc and again I will hear about this


through temporary connections

Em m buzzing with sounds of news-speak,


gossip and have-you-heard-abouts.
Inside and outside we will know
that these connections are futile,
full of non-passionate failings,
too late for preventing avoidable accidents
and opportunities missed for diagnosis.

Contents
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29
Gutter-Witch
From up here,
where the steam
of the street heat
rises,
I hear the savage cackle
of some gutter-witch,
who argues the price
of a pizza slice
or a look misguided
in her direction.

r d o n
Go
And she who has dressed

a Mc for this occasion


to sounds that one day

Em m she will come to know as youth,


pulls at the black strap that has
from her shoulder slipped unnoticed
to reveal an identical one of white
on her sunscorched skin.

From above to below


she knows nothing of me
watching this,
Contents or knows that one
Go Forward did witness the kiss
that was wet with deception,
Go Back

30
still she clung to the argument’s hiss
as her strapless body mingled with his.
The street steam cools
and falls,
fools find themselves
in some other’s home
where beds will be slept in
at right angles to sense,
and the idea of sedition is given no chance.
Sunday mornings mix
in their cocktail smell
of duvets used and cigarettes spent.

r d o n
Go
Now in the not quite still

a Mc turn of the dawn


I find myself

Em m more closely drawn


to the man who street cleans
last night’s screams,
and the rain
which gutter runs
to some place
free of noise.

Contents
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31
Blue Black Zac
Blue Black Zac
on his knees
eyes to heaven.
In the May sunshine
you can see the souls
of his shoes as he rests on his heels.

This is the May Day bank holiday


of a ‘returned to school’ child’s drawing:
spider sun in the top left corner,

r d o n an ice cream, a football, a grazed knee.

Mc Go This is a children’s playground,

m a three red swings,

Em banana slide,
a park bench
and railings.

Blue Black Zac


on his knees
eyes to heaven.
May sunshine
warm on his face.
Contents He dreams of a man
Go Forward riding a red horse among
myrtle trees in a ravine with red
Go Back

32
brown, white horses behind him.
This is the May Day bank holiday of two friends,
Ikea excited, driven car park crazy by two more friends
and two more friends, all with the idea of a space-saving-shelf
that they have the perfect photograph of themselves and a loved one
in a fake leopard-skin-style frame that will look just wonderful
in a kitsch kind of way.

There is another car park,


near a playground.
They will park there.

r d o n Getting out, gabbering and gibbering

Go
half tripping on tape measures

a Mc half noticing a man in the park


resting on his knees.

Em m Blue Black Zac in his tracksuit,


trainers, beloved football shirt,
on his knees looking to the Lord
who said:
“These are the horns that scattered Judah
so that no one could raise his head.
let the dying die and the perishing perish,
their buyers slaughter them
Contents and go unpunished.”
Go Forward Or at least this is what Zac thought he heard.

Go Back

33
This is the May Day bank holiday
twelve months since we
shared a pub, a pool table, a jukebox.
Your broad chest, you talked
of your little prince and princess
in a land far far away with a woman you wanted to call wife.

Zac, twelve months ago we sat in a blue black car,


watched the sunset, and borrowed binoculars
from the couple in the car next to us.

r d o n You’d never seen so far in one gaze stretched,

Go
so far you said it was almost the future.

a Mc Zac, if you could have seen the moon


turn twelve times from then you would see

Em m no son rising from his knees.


You joked, you said if there’s a red sky at night
it meant the chip shop was alight.

Blue Black Zac on his knees on a day


when many shepherds had already risen
over the land.
Shepherds who do not care for the lost,
seek the young, do not heal the injured or feed the healthy
Contents but eat the meat off the choice sheep, tearing off their hooves.
Go Forward
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34
Zac, I was the child on the swing.
Zac, I was the Ikea excited.
Zac, I was even the blood hungry hack
who got the line, the fact that you
were found dead on your knees and looking to heaven for answers.
Blue lights flashing on your face and arms blackened by your own blood
and didn’t that grim discovery as we called it sell a few more copies
of the evening edition that would otherwise have been packed out
with May Day frivolities and it gave us something to talk about over a pint –
what a cracking story.

r d o n
Go
Zac, I am more of a hypocrite than those hacks, for in life

a Mc I would never have written about you.


Thought of you almost as a figure of insignificance.

Em m Still sons die for the recognition that they did live.
And now, Zac, though you can no longer hear me,
I will speak of you
to those who would otherwise
never have known your name.

Contents
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35
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