Zoë Skoulding

The War Office

sandbagged the reach of vision

linear struts talons over space

each head unravelling a map

from the viewpoint of an

astronaut the top of a spire

that no-one without a god

would ever consider building

a calculation of accidents

in the dark places of their

hearts and minds picked out

like gizzards the difficulty of

saying who ‘they’ are and who

‘we’ are in camera obscura

lit by the pinhole window

unfolding on the screen

they speak for us they speak

for us they swoop down

on the pathways and none of us

is innocent they fall up into air

and it swims around them

enemies gone underground

caught in the city’s mesh

in the confusion between attack

and accident the room swims

in broken marble wretched ash

Tower

the wind

tower

could be

a pack

of lies

on stilts

or else

a call to

prayer

language

disembodied

via

radiator

pipes

between

storeys

as voices

tangle

in the

breeze

directives

are

disobeyed

but

something

holds it up

still it

leans

between us

on ladders

where we

built it in

the silt

of the

buried river

flooding

the foundations

again

and

again songs

ooze underground

Airport

when the flight is called

follow heels clicking

in the flughafen at dusk

rows of chairs face each other

rows of averted faces

pass through control

and money dissolves

in the exchange

I fly out of

light contamination

disappearing down a

white throat the perfumed surface

every angle planes pass through

clouds under glass

as bottled spirits

In the forest where they fell

Everything’s here at once, the green relieved

by streaks and veins of lighter tints and black. Purplish

glaucous berries. Time spirals out of seed

pushed inside its grave: keep one eye on the past

and you’re blind in one eye, don’t look back at all

and you’re blind. So you knuckle under

or down. In clay the bones plough waves, the soil

a skin pulled taut in drying wind. Clusters

from the leaf-axils: fine-grained, very hard,

white, but inclining to yellow, frittered in the

branching of the species. Shot as arrows

from the toxic yew stretched against a spine.

The enemy says who I am, up to my neck in mud.

Inscribed on tablets of beech, toothed edges

netted with veins, waved margins. Muscle cells

as delicate Ariels surrender to capillary attraction,

wind-fertilized, the greenish blooms. Specific histories

don’t fade but circle in a constant outward movement.

alveoli

They call the surface of the landscape a skin (the hugeness of that organ). But it is a lung. 25 times the surface of the skin, 500 million passageways into the blood. Erin Mouré

take a walk down

a deep breath where

fractal branches crumple air

ways divide and multiply

in street plan sections

deep in the creases

of lungs an interior

surface like raised hands

with eyes looks back

at wet air exhaled

in clouds as gas

exchange latticed under fog

or honeycombed in lights

in steps of respiration

I follow my nose

down pharynx larynx windpipe

bronchi bronchioles and into

the tips of terminal

branches further in and

farther out it’s winter

and it should be

snowing but it’s too

warm for a coat

a line I dreamed

escapes me slides between

inverse passages that suck

in cash expel it

through glittering halls or

was that malls or

maws the underground unfolds

at each step in

blood transport as doors

open to respiratory trees

starred with blue lights

through darkness a face

travels as time grows

out of itself and

antique domes jut against

sheer glass or brick

scuffed where painted ads

peel off and underfoot

the sandy mud exposes

pipes and drains with

planks laid over while

mist presses down on

arched ribs of trees

and oxygen crosses alveoli

The Air House

wind snags on the gap

between timbers a tongue

against my teeth

disturbs breath

drawn across languages

as air in a room

settles and circulates

around a body full of oxygen

open to a clear morning

the sound of breath

complicates the room

I brush my lips against

your ear to make

a small patch of

air I can live in