Jackson

For the little things … The rough uneven pavers with spring weeds sprouting in the cracks The painted path between International and Domestic The travellers asleep in the sun beside it The lawn they’re allowed to lie on The modest terminal, its low ceiling The little bird swooping beneath it The tip of its beak… Read more

I let my legs and arms come off and lay them in the dust My long muscles melt Fluid oozes all over the boards and out across the universe The head comes off the neck like a paddymelon from a dry vine in late summer between a fence and a highway, rolls away and falls… Read more

When I looked in the book I found: Time is the temple—Time itself and Space— observed, marked out, to make the sacred place on the four-quartered sky, the inwalled ground. ——Ursula K. Le Guin, “Contemplation at McCoy Creek” If I’m good, Lord, if my karma serves, will you bring me back as a bass guitar?… Read more

I hid all the clocks. Got up when I wanted, went to bed when I wanted, ate when I wanted. My brain wailed for its numbers. It’s hungry time, teatime, I said. Restless. Walk time. Tired. Bedtime. In the middle of the dark my brain demanded a number. Let’s lie here and see what happens,… Read more

It’s as if they said, three hundred years ago, this is a house, a flat-sided box with a door and small plain windows, two storeys of fired or quarried country, my country, grey upon brown upon grey, gathered in patches and swathes amid the irrepressible green— the fields, trees, hedges, lawns— gathered in blocks and… Read more