Molly Bloom
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  • Hazel Smith
  • Previously in Molly Bloom
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  • MOLLY BLOOM
  • Julia Webb
  • Sarah James
  • Gerry Loose
  • Maria Stadnicka
  • Jonathan Catherall
  • Rhea Seren Phillips
  • Mark Goodwin
  • Zohar Atkins
  • Steve Spence
  • Iain Britton
  • Melissa Buckheit
  • Robert Sheppard
  • Hazel Smith
  • Previously in Molly Bloom
  • Editor
  Molly Bloom

Mark Goodwin



St Ream Through Campus, A Myth
a Luffobrough,            an Engedgeland,           a 2012
 
 
@ A back of A Gas
 
Research Centre
in a Holywell Woods
 
(on a univers(e)
it(t)y town’s shade-tinged
 
rim of flickering histories)
 
a stream’s
wet thesis (will)
 
          be
 
(gin)gan/gins
 
          •
 
at a stream’s rising
a naked shape gives
 
-&-takes steps (is
 
(in a flash
-glimpse (in
 
          a gap
 
between branches (seen
 
                             by an uplooking laid
                             low creaturely
 
                             eye))) a
 
dark letter X against sky)
 
          •
 
a shape startled
a shape shifted
 
from undergrowth so
 
trembling fracture(’)s
a shape’s spell
at a stream’s
 
westerly beginnings
 
a shape’s dirt-smudge-steps
enter a ropey
trail see-through & murky
wet’s twine of stained cords all
 
wriggling liquid chaos
 
bare feet hurt
in a stream’s flow
 
feet quiver out wet steps
heading away from west to
 
follow a stream’s pass
age to gain
 
an entry easterly
to pass through
 
a gap in ground
 
on a rimland campus’s westerly edge
 
a shape’s steps slosh
as a stream’s clear flesh is
 
strolled through
 
a brick is a toad’s fossil instinct
a brick’s emotion is of
course oblong a toe slips
 
soft fumes of ditch-rot
 
now death-stench
harsh & sharp
as hot light
in nostrils
yet dark
as bog-sludge
 
a twinge of ancestry
flicks a shape’s left
Achilles’ tendon
 
chiffons polythenes
& ripped silks of water wrap
 
a shapely syllable’s walking
 
the passiveness of scum
holds other worlds
 
a culvert swallows a whole
town’s molten silvery windows
gleaming ropes writhe
 
                                                          all that’s
                                                          is-seen
 
smooth slick
of slime over pebbles
a shape’s soles press
 
 
          into an un
 
 
                             seen (sea) bed
 
 
jagged broken brick
clots of silt &
dissolved footnotes like
 
                                      smoke blown through water
 
a shape’s fingers graze
a blackbird’s drenched dead frame
splayed in the stream
feathers like ink-jelly
needling pricks of fractured bone
plasticky quills of
 
course discourse
gets stretched
 
as twiggy sentences dangle strands
of intellectualised algae caught from
floodwaters’ caress
 
                   (through a wobbling lens
                   of a stream’s rippling skin
                  
                   a shape’s shape
                   blurs to a
 
                   fuzzy X seen
                   by a low-lying
 
                   fish)
 
weed is a stream’s muscles
rubbing on a streambed’s bones
a drain-grille an organ of un
 
          known grief
 
anxious at a grille’s mouth
weeds’ wavering green flags of
 
          love(s)
 
thee willow once
was a novel exp
loded its leaves
its pages its trail
ing twigs a failed
 
structure but now
 

a kingfisher’s bright
blue myth told for
ever in a millionth
 
                                      of this second
 
wet earth’s clean-dirt perfume
 
a shape’s toes press through
mud’s gritty ooze clear
 
water’s metal tang entwined
 
with faint
grilled beef burger
 
students eating
on grass in
 
sunshine knowledge
 
a moveable feast’s napkins
a young weeping
 
willow lets
tendrils scrape wet reflections
 
          a shape
 
dissolves its letter  X  steps
through complete  &  gone
 
          as sleep(’s)


Copyright © Mark Goodwin 2018

poet Mark Goodwin
Mark Goodwin speaks and writes in various ways. He has published five full-length poetry collections and six chapbooks with various English poetry houses, including Longbarrow Press and Shearsman Books. His latest chapbook is All Space Away and In (Shearsman 2017). His next full-length (which includes fiction) – Rock as Gloss – is due from Longbarrow in November. Mark lives with Nikki on a boat in Leicestershire, and is a balancer, walker, climber, and stroller ... This is his fourth appearance in Molly Bloom.



MOLLY BLOOM: New POETRY in a modernist tradition

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