Impermanance

DECADE

Maddy Costa

I5

Spring coil circle back

a list of common enemies

clocks

demarcations of ticking clocks
treachery of digital clocks after dark
rupture of alarm clocks

this roiling state of alarm

mirrors

stationed in bathroom
watchful in hallway
the reflective surface of household objects

glint of knife
averted gaze

winter

etiolateddesolate
stealing light from steel grey sky
ice creep creak in brittle lungs

grinding, the world turns
breathe
keep breathing

power that is, money
that is, incarcerate taxonomy of human worth
the violence of deed and word

guiltlessshameless

fireproof

and so tantalising

grasp it in

from
with

unruly names

present remedies (garden friends)

ordinary struggles repeating through time
receding blue of hollow sky

or the sharp line of moonlight

cutting a path

into
over
acrossthe sea

prose accepts, poetry rebels

slip the leash of gender
destabilise power

(breathe)
(keep breathing)

and refuse

trembling
on the brink

rebelwild radical
as spring

re-fuses

liquid heatfrom tangled rootssurging

tumult unfurling
limbs outstretched

exultant

Submission Title

Spring coil circle back.

Submission Location

Stockwell London SW4.

Submission Notes

"prose accepts, poetry rebels": quoted from The Return to Poetry by Laurence Binyon, published in Rhythm Spring 1912.

"trembling/on the brink": quoted from The Katherine Mansfield Notebooks (in turn quoted in Richard Cappuccio’s essay Katherine Mansfield’s Russian Mask: Boris Petrovsky and the Poetry of Rhythm).

Manifesto Statement

Think of it as three strands of care – caring for, caring about, caring with – plaited with three strands of listening: listening to, listening for, listening with.