Cyclone E-Book

Robert Peake

• Herausgeber: Nine Arches Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 42

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Robert Peake's second full collection of poems is about weathering storms—personal, political, psychological—in our present-day climate of chaos. These are matters of life or death, and Cyclone urges us to consider what the ill wind may bring, and how we will survive it. Peake's acutely tuned poems bring eloquence and urgency to matters of profound devastation. With shattering delicacy, he writes of personal loss, of grief and the long aftermath; "whenever the wind sprays into my face, I taste salt of your absence". These poems also hazard an eye at the global weather and find a world in turmoil, wild with unreliable news and terrible forecasts. Manifesting between the storms is the man with the kindest face. Is he here to save us or warn us? A guide or a harbinger? As these brilliantly-visioned poems suggest, nothing is certain in the eye of the storm. Nevertheless, there is some form of consolation and rescue: "He seems at home in this tempest. He seems happy".

Leseprobe

Cyclone

Cyclone

Robert Peake

ISBN: 978-1-911027-44-7 eISBN: 978-1-911027-66-9

Copyright © Robert Peake, 2018

Cover artwork © Photograph ‘Storm Approaching’ by Johannes Plenio

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Robert Peake has asserted his right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published July 2018 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14,

Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed in the United Kingdom by:

Imprint Digital

Nine Arches Press is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

for Valerie

and

remembering James

CONTENTS

The Man with the Kindest Face

Nomansland Common

The man with the kindest face has change for a twenty

Village Panto

Why I Should Be Over It By Now

Cognates of Grief

Cyclone

End of the Meeting

The man with the kindest face in time of revolution

The Opposite of Sleepwalking

The Mothra of Equanimity

Abduction

The man with the kindest face pumps up your bicycle tyre

Due Date

Getting On With It

To The Black Dog’s Master

Mood Diary

The man with the kindest face runs for political office

Homesickness

Intermediate Sword Swallowing

Stockholm

Selfie Smile

Technological Advancements

With Two

Delusion, California

Free Will

Confirmation Bias

Patient Refused Dental Anaesthesia

The low-price leader heads the parade

“Confident Middle-Aged Man Sitting and Smiling Against White Background”

Inventions

The man with the kindest face helps you rearrange your wardrobe

What Will Survive Us

Magpie

Waking Up to the Last Winter on Earth

Letter to the Last Megafauna

Insults for Trees

Collective

Reading Dostoevsky in the John Lewis Café

Berry-Coloured Scarf

Failure to Thrive

The man with the kindest face checks your passport

Horse Optimism

Acknowledgements and thanks

About the author & this book

“Lord, here comes the flood…”

Peter Gabriel

The Man with the Kindest Face

The rear-view glimpse is fleeting

as he lets you into the lane.

He might not have a face at all

or change it like a set of masks –

behind a newspaper in the waiting room,

sliding over to make room on the bus.

You resolve next time to look at him,

risk letting him look back at you.

You taste the salt in your throat,

and you hear him ask, What’s wrong?

You smile at him and say, Nothing.

And you mean it. Nothing at all.

Nomansland Common

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins…”

– T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

I.

                You wake up. Thursday.

In England, not that house, but the other

one, and you are married, and you are

employed, and today is a workday. It is

early. You flex the fingers of your dominant

hand. You are lying on it. You are lying on

your right-hand side, and the pillow is damp

around the right-hand corner of your mouth.

You roll out of bed onto your left leg.

The shock of it travels to the hip-socket,

left shoulder, the spine reverberates

in sympathy. You wake up. You are you.

Two egg cups greet the morning.

Tapping and slicing, you lay waste the shell,

meant to be broken from within, meant to be

the emergence of life from protective slumber,

the first waking, coated in the soil of blood –

a leaf periscopes, a small beak probes, shakes

off the dirt of its making, and you who have

forgotten, find it now underneath your nails

and curl it out with a dull knife, scrub it

out with a brush, mould the soft clay of your

belly over the first scar of your making.

II.

The taste of blackened sunlight,

the ash-taste of morning, stabbing the drapes.

We rise, assemble, tuck in, fall out, lie flatly

through our teeth about how much we love it here.

              Blackbird splashes

paint on the wall, a test of faith

its piezoelectric charm, and overtone,

the low hum of a foraging bear,

of diesel truck, trembling to stay still,

bright young man in the opioid clinic,

radial whirr of tyres losing their grip.

I am the spike at the top of the acorn,

splinter in smooth wood, punchline’s sting.

That salty taste in the mouth, red spot

on your napkin, sliver of under-nail ice,

that’s me –

                              I am waiting, pincers aloft,

and abdomen throbbing, mandibles poised

on each side of my articulated face.

Step on me, on a crack, step up, fall in,

and be singed by the translucent barb

as it plunges through willing skin.

III.

                             How fast can you go

down the hill, your legs becoming springs,

becoming spring itself, arms winged out,

dodging the pollen-dander flak, you are

young, they say, and may it ever be so,

shuddering to a halt in the long gully,

a shadow passes over, dipping low –

how could you recognise your future

self without a name, a form, it is cold