EVENTS
By Giles Goodland
Events sustain long enough to be things:
tornado, argument, long journey
in which it is clear from the cage
how the high-beam tracks the nameless
skimmed trees. Each event finds on the road
that it itself is the wrenched twig, blurring.
That dull bruise on the horizon marks
where the sun is no longer—exit
wound, punched hole—followed by
the thin moon cycling towards the next tree,
seen from the minibus’s diminishing light.
One star is the same as another.
We are those without names,
crude topographers of wind.
Thoughts pull themselves out: they
become words. Press your phone
against your ear: the sentence’s chains
haul you up and land you here.
A MONUMENT BETWEEN MOMENTS
By Giles Goodland
Days speak roughly of previous days.
Inside each shapeless thing a crystal sharp
edge aspires. What matter is? Ask what it
does: a wet dog shaking until there’s no
dog. Longer than an eclipse, a thought.
The jarred bird flies out, jarring. Rooks
hop from headstones, a screw against
the fence a stay against impermanence.
Dark bells ring in the tanks the souls
are dark too and exhausted until we come
to lock them in wooden chests
and dead moths spill from their urns.
I saw the state totter and steady, heard
songs tremble and write themselves.
Giles Goodland's books include Of Discourse (Grand Iota 2023). A Spy in the House of Years (Leviathan, 2001) Capital (Salt, 2006), Dumb Messengers (Salt, 2012) and The Masses (Shearsman, 2018). Civil Twilight was published by Parlor Press in 2022. He has worked as a lexicographer, editor, and bookseller, and teaches evening classes on poetry for Oxford University's department of continuing education, and lives in West London.