Andrew Wells
Two Poems
goldfish poem
each corner laid
bare like –
see all corners laid
before me – of what/
of the great big
blue / what kind
of I am readjusting
to an interface of tides
if I compared satellites
to peonies, would you still –
all corners laid or left ajar
like bright devices – I am sorry
to mull notions of irregular lungs,
surprisingly shallow images
in all corners of the fishbowl
what does that even mean/
I’m solely concerned with the misgivings
of tautologies held up in that thinning
and overcast river, muddied
by inappropriate, stolen footwear
there’s no good way to say how I hate you
year on year, don’t row downstream
to find the long way back I’m coming around
to thinking grey is a lovely if not superlative colour
fifteen years earlier
I am searching for enamel
thinking it particular
to sharks in lunacy
of overcast afternoons
holding horses up
to sounds of heavy
breathing to the death
of lying because I claimed
to know scream of bone
to be so different
in make-believe.
I am searching for eyes
the colour of enamel
among half-hearted fogs
this is nothing
you’ve seen nothing
our fog is our answer
to downpours smoking
on concrete, as in
forgotten states
of burning.
If I called
this simulacra would that
be far from the open chest?
A priest brought incense
to the firefight so I died
of laughter, I died
of laughter, I died
properly to affirmation
choking on afternoon’s
non-event.
My death will be a most accurate filter
I mean it, down to it,
I grasped at water’s pretence to anger leaving crossfade.
Andrew Wells has work in Amberflora, 3:AM Magazine, Fanzine, Minor Lit[s], The Scores, SAND Journal, Poetry Wales, and others. He is the author of two pamphlets, SEALED (Hesterglock, 2020) and Menacing Sense (Osmanthus, 2021).
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