only horses cry
blinking arm rasher than intelligent scissors cup
bleeding out on proposed thumbnail skitters in the pink
liminal flow reduced acetaminophen ears
less bulbous ox concentrate gang of the rule of three
thigh hiatus in lurid ego desolder pump
walk it to mark and whine petals ovary over
also vary overs as if i could challenge fact
are you ready for the beach bodies aching on time
in a pulse for crocus sold on the rising moodswing
back to deferral of sentence rewilding the sign
and repeat while home burns nightly restored unbalance
knocking the fumes we were simply past embarrassment
you and i know the calamitous cop for silence
more fun with is
my most extreme self-consciousness has a leg in it
and is structured like a second language understood
in parts when spoken slowly and more fully in print
o companionable absence of a second leg
from my inane flap now i am a kind of trousers
wearing at all times an n95 stocking mask
i rob the past confusing it and the leg with me
above my head is much that would interest my leg
my brow is still red from the kiss of the queen mother
in my new i don’t do this i don’t do that poems
shaking a loss-leader thigh gap to the sound of one
high heel treading softly on my human ball my cock
is in my pocket it is poems by iggy pop
willy’s lyke-wake
i bought a soap dish that smells of condom lubricant
with a hey the cuddie o’er the kye et cetera
and in that soap dish there was literally nothing
fegs to the barn owl wrongly identified as such
i sold a side plate with no inherent qualities
the putative barn owl has carried my snood awa
the buyer claimed it was blue and ebay sanctioned me
i inherited a trivet and left it to you
o bury my body in sussex my bi goshawk
to bequeath unheated in its original box
cremate my soul in red chernobyl mither mither
as i sense you already did though what is unclear
is the will to clarity contested this plague year
a protestant with no mitochondria has been discovered living in the intestines of a chinchilla
in the unlikely event of landing in a glass
of water outside stevenage you will not have died
so early and often as in our impatient dreams
to be alone without you in the vantablack stage
of grief is the true beginning of marketable
my pea-green uninterruptible selling point blank
as a magic tablet set up on a molehill crest
to command the half-time chiasmus of our pronouns
the socialised distance is going in for a hug
you pull out of the hug too soon but it’s still going
every pressure point a prayer a station of the hug
bent on convincing itself you’re real afraid it won’t
get to hug you again and eventually it can’t
Peter Manson lives in Glasgow. His books include Poems of Frank Rupture (Sancho Panza Press), English in Mallarmé (Blart Books), Adjunct: an Undigest and For the Good of Liars (both from Barque) and Between Cup and Lip (Miami University Press, Ohio). Miami UP also publish his book of translations, Stéphane Mallarmé: The Poems in Verse. Most recent pamphlets are Factitious airs (Zarf Books) and Windsuckers & Onsetters: SONNOTS for Griffiths, a collaborative book written with the poet Mendoza (Materials Press). petermanson.wordpress.com for more.
GLASFRYN, LLANGATTOCK, POWYS NP8 1PH
+44(0)1873 810456 | LYN@GLASFRYNPROJECT.ORG.UK