By Frankie Mace
Floodlights on a back road observant of vigilance
Murmurless but for the almonds growing by the wall // topophobic
Careering beetles assault Oleaceae branches
Screen doors dustily // dusk hot and orange speaks for us
Floodlit by a porch light filled with the appearance of things
The stars weakly compete // longing chews the air it has substance
On a back road by the wall a many-scented memory graft
Yellow hills recede as arms murmurless
In a white box house separation spasms // brown limbs longly drape tangentially
Sparse lacerations inarticulating rapture
Chemically pool-blue child shriek leaps // kitchen fed olives
Chicken innards bloody flies-haunted slap flat stone floor cat laps
Here is the locale of convalescence
Reassembling in the heat // breaking almond shells with a found rock
Whirring grey Discman wires connect us nose to nose // brown arms white nails
Poet’s jasmine wreathed fecundity flavoured stickily with loss
Accumulated debris of terracotta tiles // ants liquescently uncanny weave a sun lounger
Dusk hot and orange // speaks for us
Slick smiling melon slices cut for a pool-blue brown child
Moorish blankets rough faced day beds dark cornered
Here is the locale of convalescence // four rooms afternoon quieted
Rough built stone walls // cool hot air currents soporifically muted
Old car recedes crunch skids the gravellish back road
Not a crash but a dismantling centre first // cicadas in the dust hills
Behind the box house by the wall amid the almonds and olives.
Pain is kept there as a memory // murmurless