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IAIN
BRITTON
My poetry is published in the UK, USA and Australia and NZ and can be accessed on some reputable online journals.
Some recent overseas publications are: Jacket, New England Review, Overland, Retort Magazine, Drunken Boat, Free Verse, Slope,
Tinfish, Snow Monkey, Magma, The New Writer, Poetry Scotland,, Orbis, Poetry Nottingham, The Reader, Nthposition,
Wasafiri, Stride Magazine, Staple, Sentinel Poetry, Neon Highway, Tears in the Fence and
Harvard Review. Forthcoming - Agenda, Poetry Salzburg Review,
Papertiger, Snorkel, and Bravado.
EARTHQUAKE
Suffering this morning
from a turnip-fat tongue
white wine that had
taken the short cut
to my mouth too often
I surface squinting
into a sun
reddened
by not enough
sleep.
Last night the two of us
had our sound systems
turned up
too loud.
You slept
unaware of the flickering
light
the bed shaking.
~
Who’s this who
runs through the night
cracking open stars
smashing windows
tossing muck
into the air?
~
Juice spills on the floor
as I finally
reach a woman
who yesterday wasn’t here.
Drink up
and be grateful
for this is all
I’ve got for now.
Sun-licked is the site of daisies buttercups clover and a girl
Sun-licked is the site of daisies buttercups clover and a girl
kicking in the seams of a denim-coloured ball
kicking it fiercely and scampering on.
Couples lie about in flesh-made intimacies
each territorially distanced from voyeuristic lip
readers like myself. Young women are
stretched out on grassy slopes exposing white skin
eyelids bellies thighs sticking their barefeet in the fires of the sun.
Dumped on the lawn there’s this statue
muscled and veined. A man locked in stone.
A cheap Mediterranean imitation of the Phideas School. I
touch him with the palm of my hand and a
dwarf passes - the head of Zeus on a boy’s body. He
feeds bread to swans and the swans rise up on their wings.
The ball comes rolling and I kick it on. The girl
runs past into the mouth of a sculpted corrugated-iron carp.
The ball seems to have a life of its own. It
bounces down a path getting more lift more spring
denting the atmosphere. There are people here
flying about like kites
arms spread out catching the warm whipping winds
their bodies flattened against a blue sky.
Summer’s quirkiness is spruced up for the occasion. Workmen
with painted faces chain-smoke roll-your-owns and
argue about who’s going to pick up the shovel who’s
going to dig the next ditch. The ball hangs above them -
it hovers wobbles - enters their burnt-out swallowing mouths
one by one by one.
copyright © Iain Britton
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