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