Splashed awake by a fuchsia, Dead white stick & Boxing gloves
by Chris Kinsey
[ poetry - june 04 ]
Splashed awake by a fuchsia
fountain of stored rain
drips from cheek to cleavage.
Drizzle pimples paper
splashed awake by a fuchsia
magenta stamens stretch across the path.
Quinces rot, leaves scuffle,
the cobbled path is slippery,
splashed awake by a fuchsia fountain.
Dead white stick
(19 March, 2003)
A lightning strike
washed up on a beach -
prised from the teeth of playing dogs
to conduct leaps, growls, snap-gymnastics.
Everyone strokes down its grain into stories.
Shape-shifting it to:
water serpents, a diviner's rod,
an olive branch,
ivory, an antler from a rutting stag,
unicorn horn, campfire crackle.
Sunk skulls with eye-sockets
crying scorched sand.
Pips spit the broadcaster into announcing
the first bombing raids on Baghdad.
Midnight, it rakes out of my bag,
to point at the moon in its oily halo.
Boxing gloves
Handed to me for amnesty -
these veterans pucker on the shelf
like a couple who've taken their teeth
out to be comfortable.
Blood-burst red,
the outer skin's soft
as skin stretched over fontanelles.
The linings' shredded strings
are a clench on the throat tendons
of the boy conscript you silenced.
Punch-drunk on sweat
poundings and jabs didn't
knock the replays cold.
Putting them on's a fumble into
puppet-darkness
a scrabble back
into the foxhole of a Falklands spring -
the shock of ripping awake from a garrotte
your best mate shrieking bayonet steel.
