a flotsam head
not quite ashore
treading water seemingly
speaking ancient Greek or reformed Latin
who would know these days
drifting down a tidal river
to eastern beaches
water like tea
augury symptoms in urine
the lost squid in a rock pool
waiting for the afternoon tow
once hands held out arrival
for our beautiful roles
your ventriloquist’s tongue
in a perfect sentence
you drove the core out
peeled my love in one long threat
the scrutiny of your beak dissecting
no boat can get anchorage
the Antarctic breath colludes
capsizing histories
all along the shipwreck coast
our children your new young lover
hoping the mast they cling to
has a future where the baggage
intersects a stranger’s journey
these serpent arms
that held your face in compromise
I licked the salt from your inner thighs
strangled ambition for a wanting
so powerful my eyes were burnt out
the estuary pushes
this infection squeezed abroad
one way a new continent
turn about parturient islands arch
hardy shoulders curse the dozen labours
bent to the task like the trees of Patagonia
First published in North of Oxford
‘Abandoned Soliloquies’ UnCollected Press 2019, p8.
Photograph ‘trees of patagonia’ Ghislain Mary courtesy of North of Oxford.
James Walton Poetry 