There's a Witch in the Word Machine E-Book

Jenni Fagan

• Herausgeber: Polygon
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 41

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

There's a Witch in the Word Machine, is a collection that underpins Jenni Fagan's entire approach to words. Her spell poems are portraits of people, lovers and cities: Paris, New York, Edinburgh, Detroit, LA, and San Francisco. The excerpts of her Truth poem are a political response to great uncertainty in the world right now. This collection is an exploration of words as spells, incantations, curse and solace.

Leseprobe

THERE’S A WITCH IN THE WORD MACHINE

forall the witches

THERE’S A WITCHIN THE WORD MACHINE

Jenni Fagan

First published in Great Britain in 2018 byPolygon, an imprint of Birlinn Limited

Birlinn Limited

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.polygonbooks.co.uk

Copyright © Jenni Fagan, 2018

The right of Jenni Fagan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978 1 84697 463 2

eBook ISBN 978 1 78885 104 6

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typeset in Verdigris mvb by Polygon, Edinburgh

Printed and bound by TJ International Ltd, Padstow

CONTENTS

There’s a Witch in the Word Machine

Spell for Hope and Renewal

Natural Born Itinerant

Spell for One Who Dreams They are in a Vast Red Room

Backing Dancers of White Rabbits in Suits

Sunday Afternoon

Spell for the Futility of Longing

Spell for Waking in the Museum of the Lost Generation

Spell for Loneliness in Paris

Spell Written in a Square

An Old Fashioned Courtship

I Fall in Love All Day

Spell for One Who Feels as if They Will at Any Second Take Flight

My House is Not My House

Want

Gertrude and Alice

I

Spell for a Woman in Waiting

Do You Remember ?

The Bones of the Witch’s Tree

Ode to Unconditional Love

Gringo’s Whiskers

Hackney

Spell for Someone Eternally Restless

Living with Dharma

Tales of the Old Country

Spell for When You Cannot Breathe in Paris for a Day

Swan

Bangour Village Hospital

Spell for a Stomach that Cannot Keep Food

She is Not the Cat’s Mother

Spell for God

Spell for Bellevue Street

You Know

Spell for Someone Who Had Not Dreamt of a Unicorn Lately

It’s the Silence That Gets to You

Spell for Something to Covet

O.C.D.

Spell for Someone with a Feather Tattoo and Illicit Thoughts

Spell for Earthbound Angels

St Bert

I Want to Be the Kind of Woman

On Loving Men with Beards

We Are Edinburgh

I Do Know This

The First Time

Addict

Sentient Being

It Wasn’t Nice the Way You Conducted the Orchestra

It Doesn’t Always End Well

Responding to Life in a Secret Squirrel Universe

Death in Sednaya

Holding Yourself with Dignity

Spell for Angels in Paris

Acknowledgements

There’s a Witch in the Word Machine

There’s a witch in the word machine

spell-casting:

dots, particles, atoms

elemental, bodiless,

a typing shell!

The nothing sky has no good intentions.

Go beyond it.

Timber wolves bay in testimony

as fingertips trail light:

argot, idiom, double-grave, slash-through

words have no pure notions . . .

they are flesh

strong and ventricle –

poison tipped arrows,

gouge them out

with a sharpened athame.

This is no thaumaturgy

(she can’t leave the word machine)

astral lovers (as they are)

cannot be parted by logic or reason,

she brings no betrayal,

only incantations, divination,

sex magic

and a desire to crash the programme,

rewrite it as it should have

been.

Spell for Hope and Renewal

Take rain cold and sharp, the bite of wind,

two good claw marks, the estranged

ways of sunlight, bring common warmth,

and an idea of harmony, acceptance

of discord out there in all the great

beyonds and even, in the valleys.

Natural Born Itinerant

1.     Do not travel without poetry and by that I mean pen and soul.

2.     Know the road runs even when you are not allowed (that month / day / second / year) to devour its pictures from trains, and planes, scooters and rollerblades, skateboards and bicycles, or on foot, or even whilst dancing.

3.     Always find the place in each city with views – know the escape routes at all times.

4.     Have a child who is keen on becoming a nomad (just in case).

5.     Make home a place you can’t remember.

6.     In between each heartbeat – try to find the promise of a familiar door.

Spell for One Who Dreams They are in a Vast Red Room

It was all red in there: walls, ceiling, door.

I was looking for a pot of beige

but I didn’t have one, it was not legal to me and I’m always law abiding.

The room was red – not the poppy of your lips,

nor the cherry as you knot it,

with a pink, wet, tongue.

We’re not talking claret or carmine or cardinal,

it didn’t seem to be of the greatest importance,

it was plain and simple

(aside from the cornice and the ceiling rose)

– it was no damask,

it didn’t taste vermillion,

it didn’t slide down my thighs

bloody and against me.

It was no sanguine dream,

forget anodyne,

this was red, red, red!