Exoskeletons – by John Kinsella
RUNNER-UP IN THE GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2020/2021
Words are less inherently
appealing less appealing
inherently only as skin
needing to graft extra
senses though likely that’s
too harsh an abrasive rub
of wild oats and seed spikes
through socks wandering
the routes of machine
to home-usage, chains
of command that take and give
but mainly take, all falling
before the trimmer cable
flayed out of speech;
The whole frame shudders
and vibrates though
fingers don’t ease the ache
of hinges, to work
with or against the gradient
is semantics
for micro-climates;
A metal eyelet lost on
a hillside enacts self-
protection to deport
as raw material and not object
as commodity one step
closer to origins & answer.
I search futility.
Walking a steep incline
friendship is never closer
or further than slipping
back into one’s own foot-
marks; holds let go
one by one as subject-tracing
a journey that can’t begin.
All of the seed falling
and so much needed &
unwanted, the scattering
of figuratives to make
greenhouses of silos
rather than places of
storage, contra-excursives.
It’s like that turning
of year at higher revolutions,
that fling of covers —
similes were invented as
a way in or way out, a relief
or substitute from labour.
Cuts, callouses, a trapdoor
spider pulling back down
as I approach, but I —
you — we — will go ’round
its circuit, its ambit
and orbit, its influence
where crossing-over is
to be stung and dragged down,
dissolved and supped on.
Exoskeletons — invertebrate
refrain till the interior
pushed back into light
collapses and compresses,
which is the powerhouse
of geo and orbit
via a state of health
to reclaim body or soul
and yet let go of that claim
on first-aid or medicaments,
exercising rights of
passage and abode as
substitutes for conscience.
Image: Jan Antonin Kolar
This poem appeared in Island 161 in 2021. Order a print issue here.
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