Two Poems

Pastoral in Relief

Of the ones that move through bit-split

high-rise to ground tubes

knitted overpasses and tunnels and back

some slip into cracks. Some will go

punk-jumped or wrist-dragged

into a seam between towers neat-stacked.

And it will be still.

No quiver of the patchwork, no arch or billow

of the winding sheet of fitted plots and streets.

Still laden buses street-creep. News sits in pulp-heaps.

Bodies join and stray

under a chink of spangled sky.

Translations

In the painting of his picture Buddy Guy

is done in blues and greys, shoulders drawn,

teeth set, teasing sound from the instrument.

How well does it come off the page?

It’s a ways off from sheet music: the

bass clef

nautilus;

tadpole-squirming

commas that don’t quite make the cut.

It’s spoken out, but it’s like

a slip of paper that reads ‘eat me’. I mean it’s

more than the sum of its parts. Brittle bits: verse and voice.

A pearl warmed through by a collarbone.