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