Chris McCabe: September 2023

LONDON EYE

Nature: an extinction rate.
Recall she was a girl
Speaking with a bullet in Budavox,

Shells on the sea blasting,
On Frith Street, where, in 1914,
Imagism flicked on. Then,

There (!) the pseudo-Blitz
Of television began, 1929.
I wear the soft black cloth

Of the bathrobe you gave me, swan
On the foam of your rising.
No home for creatures with the sun

Dialing its metronome
Onto the cool ridge's melted dome,
To kiss and caress, honey, by-gone.

QUARTER TO FIVE

Grief's a winter gulag—
growing gardenless in rain—
cardinals that cannot vote—
the air damp infected corduroy—
this bone tundra

implanted under the cranial flap
like a loveless rose petal:
slow white slime-worms
risen to bury
dim flesh in you.

© Chris McCabe 2008-2023