Nathan Thompson

half partita for prepared piano

in the house they are considering leaving

it’s the snow you see fake and

falling in its own mirror music

beating wings no two exactly alike

we are painting a floral tribute

all it grazes perched to return to normal

shaking off cautious feathers

‘the poultry bulbs make little noise’

far out on the harbour’s edge

the gardens are seen for what they are

mawkish specifics levelled by mourning

‘white is the new black’ we tend the images

out of time among spite dusted roses

as it is spring-winter you remember the lilies

considered and conspicuous in their gaudy scent

filled to bursting before oh god oh fuck

their treasures covered in sleep we cannot seem them

turn again and snort one too many martinis

but of course at this distance

just about the door opens

spirits of doves sordid in the heaving branches

I cannot part from you now again we are close

other trend-setters smooth back their white hair

3-4

‘it’s cold outside’ your record

is what we make of it the blue

hair of night hanging down (reference)

‘a martyr smoking another cigarette’

I am too tired to understand the letter

you cannot say you hand it to me

from the pluralist stalk of your heart

‘an archaic scotch for a widow?’

the TV is tuned to channels of imagined adverts

punctuated by white drizzle flickering

‘the rest is only for the wicked’

I lick you and my tongue sticks frozen

as the candle burns down (while to...)

endorses something like the dark

(one or two phrases owed to John Ashbery)

do you realise

geography becomes instant history

the TV screen presents the same image

central park in the dark

itself a simulacrum

‘a cafe is empty while all

the others in the square are full’

this is the epic of the west

a big simulated folksiness

of popsicles and ice-cream

Sundays caught on celluloid

a wall of mist is coming towards you

making itself a backdrop

on your own sunny day we’ll head for harbour if our submarine

but where were we anyway sitting there all alone

citation embedded in the speech of a particular self

I plumb forgot we were meant to be

on the other side the transmission is shifting

like a similar word into another language

the principle I said is leverage

and we can’t have this evening without you

are you too busy to be thinking or is that

just the nature of art ‘you say such things

as would empty buckets of snow in summer’

up in our balloon we see all this

like a lighting rig without a stage

continuing sans subject the pig

on a stick its eye peering up

out of your manger this is frightening

finding only odd socks in the sock drawer we’d burnt

the rest our bridges for lightness

this is not dream reasoning I’d insist you understand

but I hurt my hand on the bedstead

that evening when the rugby club attended your exhibition in Wales

who’s referencing whom (total of the night drum

heard across the years from the pits of Africa)

collapsing the sea’s big word into the sky’s bigger

‘I’m out to find you’ trimmings served

on a freshly spilled rainbow politics is always

faintly redolent of the political/ predictable

psalm chant logic forced through the harmony of a needle

they’re clearing the tables now the light draws on

a feinting did we make it I’ll let you know

being here to listen and forget what it is to rhyme

regretted decisions a cat takes to the nest

thanks we’re very aren’t we back to normal

working softness

for a long time the rain has not been heard

something about its voice led me to trust

local texture covert aware of distance

the intimate curve of pearl bright moments

you ponder whether your life may have been changed

the relationship between time and place in Cambridgeshire

mingled with snow in New Mexico

a growing sky its delicate sense of exactness

the light wind falters leaves

in the cottonwood it is barely

milk grey a set for the evening

offered free of charge conveyed in juxtaposition

this dislocation is you sitting singing in the branches

a real sense of interest in the land below