Torsade Literary Space The Lab-Grown Brain Makes Philosophy (poem)
The Lab-Grown Brain Makes Philosophy It is material to our essential understanding of power, if in defining good and evil we first grant that neither without what we will term actionability, is able to escape the formlessness of thought, taking thought as both a prompt to the accessing of images stored in […]
The Hillside (poem)
The Hillside Reprieve conserves tomorrow’s backwards step Names you neither queen, nor good nor evil Reprieve as a dogging mirror cold on counsel Reminding you there’ll be no answer No pattern but the sky Giggles your new-poured coffee Or the rain, just as the drops cease falling And the tipster turns his […]
Virginia Keltenham: First Pale Knight
The Folly The Legend of the Pale Knight Virginia Keltenham ‘Those deadly people. They’d like me a bit Elinor Glyn-ish But then they want sentiment. But then, of course, they don’t. They want some dismal comeuppance for bad behaviour, a heroine like one of Lawrence’s stultifying Magdalene figures. I suppose […]
The Dispensing (poem)
The Dispensing Is the person, as such, pleasing In ways, does the person please, and in ways offend If the good were scissored free from, we will say, four inferior samplings Sleeve, bodice, skirt, stitched, with a neat, tooth-to-tooth intermeshing Of their pinked edging We should be left to ask, part […]
Utter Blame: Fifteenth Tattersby
The Folly Tattersby Utter Blame ‘De Clieux reports the Celtic daughter could be raised— His bride full willing,’ the host, sardonic, says ‘So far south as Quimper; the Contessa di Barucchi Has invited them to stay. And what can be the meaning of that puppy-doggish eye…?’ he demands of the […]
This Game the Product (poem)
This Game the Product he I dunno true enough it seems not quite ay to raise it not quite ay, okay? complain why don’t you just, you no one cares these days by the way, you know very well, very well until they clap the cuffs on, how sore you’d like to […]
Hacked Back (poem)
Hacked Back To be a bramble, a little difficult, let one discern Your bloom This often said of you, in catalogues, powder blue Your sprouted canes No artist—not this one sitting here Much appreciates Stems with prickers, gets their woolen things entrapped Their fingertips A piece of you pushed in along a […]
A Scientific Family: Fourteenth Tattersby
The Folly Tattersby A Scientific Family You won’t Until the sun finds its moment Steadfast tick of bodies set in motion Until the turning earth has lost its math And the red eye blinks at the black-rimmed gorge’s gap You won’t have seen night fall From the cockpit of an […]
Doctrine (poem)
Doctrine They said there was a sage and revered man Who for his vows spoke never, but did chant The psalms, his mien aloft of earthly cares And soul among the blessed…this was known A bird of fields, he, counted it a break with God A deeper thing than ordinary sin To […]
The Earth Unseeded (poem)
The Earth Unseeded Entering as they would, vi-ah Unlocked galleries feeding sitting rooms apathetic Brocade and fringe, grand piano benches propping slumpen Estate-squatters pinched with starving Come to rest Who defy all stirring to object Interlopers feel the breath of drawing drafts Pipe from standing door to mantel mouth With just the […]