Matthew Caley

The Nit Pickers
(after Arthur Rimbaud)


    firstly    if any angelic brat’s forehead
is red-pitted    red-dotted
with pain points
it will be this forehead that thinks
two sisters
all firm fingers and fly girl nails
who lead him to the sill
of the ginormous bay window
above a terrace choked with cornflowers
so blue they dye the air
blue    their tangle matching exactly the tangle of his hair
through which giggling fingers
        force and find and
as they do    he sees their breathing
    goes deeper into that breath    the garden exhaling
rose spores
and honey pollen    [the cause
of the reddening?]    low whispers
from lips as if offering
and withdrawing
a kiss simultaneously    feels the beat
of eyelashes on his neck – a hummingbird out-
        side an iris staying stalled mid-air opposite –
hears fingers which never tire or still
the thread of the nit comb
the fingers at the nits
the slim fingers dotted
with infinite little crushes
so this brat    as if high on the blush
of wine    seething with antihistamine
sighs in Auto-Tune
at their caresses
and under this tender head massage
    sheds his first tears of rage


*

The Spill


    time slows then    accelerates    then again slows
either side of your coffee
its centrifugal milk-swirl
centred on a white table    everything else a peripheral blur
including Shadwell
it might look like Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty
as seen from a high glider
if someone is up there
    having shinned a filter-elm

    to gain this aerial view
through a slit in the bowed striped awning
    and is noting the pool of sugar in your palm
        early morning mist as the smoke that comes off
of poured sugar
            you both awake and yawning

    the table so rickety    you rickety also
        just a microsecond before you propped one leg with
            a novella or this half-written poem on folded A4
you spilt the coffee
    the stain looking ‘somewhat like a salt lake in Utah’
or so says a passing stranger
            apropos of nothing



*

Wispy Streamers


    supposedly Willem de Kooning
steps through    then beyond himself
through strip-door tassels
into an interior
of glare    murk and    yes    more variegated strip-door tassels
or ticker tape shredding from a steamer
as it departs New York    he’s engulfed
    by cantankerous crowds on the quay
                    ‘Goodbye! Goodbye!’    they say

    waving him away    [the reverse of how he arrived]
themselves lost in thought
and mostly on mute    popping
                            the odd champagne cork    too aware
    to lose it even after

    he loses it    mind blank but hand full of cunning
blood pumping through clueless vessels but
    he never thinks
        of stopping



*

Fusillade


    ‘the next fusillade
of catkins    buckshot or    slate
either windfall or
scattershot    is expected
at any particular
second    a wince of foresight
to pierce pin holes in the night
    make of it a colander’

    I said    with all the
rigor of a QAnon influencer
on a blocked social media platform
‘God grant me peace    or if not
    at least an unruly truce’

    as my shoulder burst
with exit wounds of blossom
    as the sky bared its stars and said

    ‘waiting is tiresome
not for nothing do I dread
    the next fusillade’
 

    11    prologue
    13    The Vulnerable
    14    The Archipelagos
    16    Bagatelle
    17    The Nit Pickers
    18    Lynx Litter
    19    Luxor
    21    The Blunderbuss
    23    The Leaf
    25    Approaches to a Door
    27    The Strop
    29    The Spill
    30    Wispy Streamers
    31    Pabl  Piccass
    32    Aphid Says
    34    Canton for the Stranded
    35    The Tickle
    36    I Conjured up a Horse
    38    Lamantia Street
    40    The Scarf
    41    from Transmitter
    63    Undescended Testicles
    64    The Obligations
    66    Double-hooped Earrings
    67    The Unbalanced
    68    Unicorn Street
    70    The Confessional
    71    from The Drifting Recidivist Says
    74    Plume Travelling
    76    The Bungalow
    78    Horse in the Sea Mist
    81    This Pure Child
    82    The Height
    83    Star-wheel
    84    Fusillade
    85    Canton for the Wastrel
    86    Depot of the Aero-houses
    88    The Weathervane
    89    Bollo’s Brook
    92    The Lynx
    94    epilogue