John W Sexton – Asimov via Ouija

John W Sexton LE P&W March 2019

Download PDF Here

Asimov via Ouija – Memories of the Yet to Come, poems by John W Sexton

John W. Sexton was born in 1958 and lives in the Republic of Ireland. He is the author of six poetry collections, the most recent of which is Futures Pass (Salmon Poetry 2018). A chapbook of his surrealist poetry, Inverted Night, is forthcoming from SurVision Books early in 2019. In 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry. Most recently, his poem “The Snails” was shortlisted for the Irish 2018 An Post / Listowel Writers’ Week Poem of the Year Award.


In Space, Space

marvels bode ill
for our ignorance … aghast
at the talking jennet

the mime mimes the heaviest
weight …
in space, space fills itself in

hosanna bwaaaaaark bcack …
the chicken who pilfered
an angel’s feathers

all elbow joints …
one-armed newhumans designed
for life around the bend

a babe in its
cumulus cradle … nine miles
of umbilical cord

a bloody business
but the milk divine … leech-calves
devour their mothers

in this jar
the soul of a hedgehog …
what is a hedge?

snagged on his tin beard …
the penny ragwife watches
her own undoing

let us end at the start …
standing by
the doorway at Nowhere


Diminished Returns

fire-service reserve …
the circus seal
takes its turn as the siren

bleached to brittleness
in the ocean gyres …
badelynges of bath ducks

clink and rattle
at the bottle bank … no one
heeds the ghosts of wine

the lampposts
reply to the last message …
Lucky sends again

nine ninja nincompoops
sent to slay a snail …
nine silver paths, each fail

untold parsecs
won’t dull its fungal blossom …
the gingerbread spaceship

chrysanthemum blight
petitions
the chrysanthemum ambassador

diminished returns …
3 chimpangutans @
5 sents 1 come 2 goes

God self-infects
imperfection antibodies …
sweats out the cosmos


The Shaggy Dog

the gentle pottery
of their casts … oh, what culture
muck makes of muck

on examining
the shaggy dog … railways service
the lice cities

Jigsaw Family Robinson …
mama gives birth
to the missing piece

brass section
also doubles as percussion …
Doorknocker Orchestra


The Grammarian Duct

piloting a buoyant mountain, engines large as grape seeds

Oldman Oaken, wasps budding through his skin

sinbad’s spiral palace down the staircase of a seashell

in the grammarian duct the Duckbill Higgingson hunts ings

beefeater’s pike opens palace doors in the prince’s stomach


A Last Resort

LIGHTFALL?
our snooker table of suns to align?
but we’re long eyeless!

weep!
not even the stains of love
left in the bedsheets of Babylon

two-hundred-eared Tommy …
listen for the pin drop
before you are born

the monk’s white cat
licks at sunlight … above, cloudlets
from cat spittle take shape

chrysanthemum ghosts
loiter in the hallway … the stairs
misses a step

a grass gas attack …
we sprout verdantly
and take to the hill

THE STARS LIKE MUST …
by Asimov via Ouija but a bit
lifeless

a last resort …
in the utility belt
a single kiss goodbye


Easily Madelaine

whip and telepathy gone …
the jockey tries
an old-school whinny

insert a zip
along the ninety teeth marks …
my body’s a wallet!

the Proust murders …
how easily Madelaine
melts into the tea

sending woodlice
up in a bottle rocket
is sending them down

at the goldfish
lost and found …
the goldfish


© John W Sexton