Nia Davies

To the east


To the east, walk across that space you can see
The meadow is an apex of what was perfect
In the trees beyond, you find someone’s shelter
This is the intended walk, it finds the sites by itself
Pollinators visit the spot where yesterday two of you
A polity here, the string between the nownesses
It wasn’t a smart move to swing so freshly towards this
Admire his sunburn turned to rud this is the colour
Of demigods but it rocks away from a summer like
Objectivity. To the east I saw my own path


*


Striatum


Crested, wool wet, all in a mode
of raging love. Warring with the
fabric of connection. The dangerous light
might not yet reach the inner flesh, but you have tried.

When the police raided bookshops,
it wasn’t so long ago either,
when tattoos & holes newly filled in.
Damp towels. Cleansing daily the grit off,

coffee rites, florality, these are recent. Could it be guilt
or shame, maybe it’s both. Could it be responsibility
or complicity, maybe it’s both. Could it be depression
or anxiety, maybe it’s both. My media is body.

So is yours. I’m troubled, you said. So tear my
poem out of its carapace. Subsist on
it, I don’t care. The romance of the rose takes up the
daytime and the sleep of colour can be peony.

The romance of placing things
in their correct zone. So at the opportune time
you can come back to them. Dry towels, coffee, poetry,
flowers and sleep its carapace.

But in minor fevers, nights collect the slight times
when they judged you. Think instead of bookshop romance
where I miss you wholeheartedly. Or cleansing
in dangerous light. A volume

on a city unvisited. There is an incremental killer
in your swig. Veins drain of peony.
Things drop through the body medium
like salts should and nutrients. The trace
of someone’s ankle tag. Some real gathering
is desired. Votive is linked to desire at branch and root.
I will ask you later if you approve.
How will I judge your answer in the bookshop

of nodes and clean towels. A swig
takes place over and over in the striatum. Stitchy
little poem strands work the fascia
and should not be exposed to dangerous light.
Poetry’s utility as peony as rage.


*


Tír na nÓg again


Youth & young thingness,
as yearlings, in animated talking
we have no thought of the other issue,
no thought of the other nows
no place like this home on the tennis court
no heaviness over whether to have a cigarette
pieces of a place I once ventured, it was called the rufts
it was a soup of lust-envy-greed etc
it was chips the texture of fudge
an inability to wear clothes that fit
oil surfacing on the skin hourly so I used a special blotting paper
bodyspraying, ways of keeping the discharges in, dabbing
jabbing at the youngness, fried pizza,
fried double cheese, fried pudding with friend,
oh I have to eat this forever this lonely screwball icecream
with a bubble gum at the bottom
another home another dreaming I was from another culture
dreaming I had better shoes
stuck wanting a new chapter on the sticky gym apparatus
what if I could never leave the mud shin pads
and never leave the playing field,
lungs burning through weather,
could go round the corner, the corridor
forever on a loop, could stratify out through the glitch
a school architecture that kept us moving
circular that was squared,
an art deco grid that haunts fairly regular
when we ran around like that in the loop

    9      Ritual Steps, Paviland
    10    Mieri
    12    Communitas / Anti Communitas / Communitas
    13    Dick Joke Poem
    16    I Have Taken Many Forms Before I Took This One
    20    Anti-poetics, anti-techniques
    21    Theatres of the mouth
    23    Scores for Ritual Poetry
    24    Multi/direction Bio/poetics
    26    Sites / drysfa
    27    The phenomenology of cut-up
    29    Rungs, fences
    31    Resources from Coelbren
    34    Hunter-Actor-Poet
    35    Sominex love letter
    38    Carotid properties
    41    Fairy Business
    43    To the east
    44    Blod rite
    47    Wassail
    48    Fear and the Piano
    50    Striatum
    52    Rig Works (Wonder / Damage)
    52        1  Oil rig gift shop
    53        2  Ocean Nomad
    54        3  Poetics: Diamonds / Middle Sea ripple
    55    Lacey
    56    This would be a retrospective
    60    Tír na nÓg again
    61    Wear the anklet as a mask
    61        1  Separation: conditions of the poem
    63        2  Liminality/Poesis
    65        3  Dys-integration
    67        4  Poesis
    69    Hafod Jam: Documentation
    72    What moving says
    74    Llewaidd, Chauvet/Uplands
    76    Mother of OYSTER

    78    Notes & acknowledgements