THE
SHIPWRECK’S BAR
The frosted shards,
For half a century tumbled by the yaw
Of the barnacled hull,
Cannot be pieced together
To articulate glassware again.
In the silence of the ocean’s floor,
Erosion has rounded their edges,
Like the blunted consonants
Of syllables
A deaf man hears,
Or the slurred speech
of a drunkard;
The unindented vowels
Bereft of jags,
No longer interlocking to transmute
An anchor
Into a tanker,
Still less a tankard
HOOP
ANCHOR TOP EGG
one morning, on the Tube,
Josie named each letter she saw
after the things they stand for
in her alphabet picture book
a man, with a letter tattooed
on each finger of each hand,
sat beside her, slumbering
'Hoop,’ she began.
‘Anchor. Top. Egg.’
'That's very good,’ I said.
'Soon you’ll be able to read.’
SUNDAY
She lies on her belly, naked,
As the bells of the Sacred Heart resound,
Her legs together, straight.
From sacrum to big toes a cleavage runs,
Dividing buttocks, thighs, calves, ankles,
soles.
It's intersected by a second line,
The crease along the bottom’s lower verge,
Completing the figure of a cross,
Which, kneeling, he bends to kiss.
Paul Demuth - I like the sound of my name ‘Paul’ because it chimes nicely with whoever I am.
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