Improbable Acts of Proximity – by Shey Marque
RUNNER-UP, GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2023
i
To imagine the dead are running
short of space – I’ll call it unlikely, so much of it
going spare, idle, we’re most hectic at the edges.
I hollo long into the wintering acres, white
particles of grief touching a thing that hits another thing
hurtling towards an edge. You bring spectre only to strangers
because my longing is too great, my pull too strong.
At some point the moon will spiral in so near,
our ocean tides will tear it apart, & it will be sublime,
for a minute.
ii
When minutes go backwards, we will
return all this chaos to order, this drinking glass
will suck wine from our fishly mouths,
we’ll throw soft ash into the flame, watch you emerge & all go
home. My message bank returns us to June,
there’s a sound like the wind after you stop talking,
a beep. I keep on replaying your last call – its temporary
queering of time that will go on to shrink & stretch. Our cells
are just a clock on repeat, wound to fifty cycles or so.
Our baby teeth are full of historical hours.
iii
Toothpaste goes back into its tube & the man who broke
science can show time flowing in two directions,
& how people are so easily fooled. Take a drunken mindphotographer
& the way he projects his thoughts
onto Polaroid. Pictures in my mind remember the future.
In it, I’m in two states at once. It’s chaotic there & you are
there, waving as if you know you’re being watched.
Stare at a waterfall long enough, rocks begin moving upwards.
It rained on the night you rose in a panic & flew.
iv
My blousy mood is bicuspid, a rose crossing boundaries
with a peony. It’s been an extraordinarily untidy time
with relationships, obligations & bouquets
& the vagaries of opiates meet my anxiety
about premature burials. A worried little bird
wagging a tail at the gate, curious to see who turns up. You,
forestalled on the other side of time,
finding a way to reconstitute. During the oratory,
white Madonna lily buds are giving birth
to tiny ballerinas, feet first.
v
Unfamiliar days are emerging & sky,
having removed its cast, is paler underneath,
less muscular. We don’t know yet what we’re capable of,
other than translucence. These blurred hours
belong to the edge. Once again, my mind wakes to a fall,
it doesn’t know which part is gone, like a missing arm
keeps reaching. I steep some extra-strength
tea, this is how we know each other best,
what we substitute for love you & other words
that don’t sound right when held in the mouth.
vi
Our mouths are barely acquainted,
& elbows in a cramped room – a series of hip hellos.
The long eyes & their languishing ability to bend light –
it strikes at odd angles. Shapes often resemble faces,
I forget that I’ve seen inside you. In the womb
I first saw the colour red as a kind of nebula,
a star dying in its own web, & a thing so immense
out there, if I climbed out too soon, I’d collapse.
Faraway things, if suddenly fetched in too close,
I, like a broken bone that heals, would never be the same.
Image: Roland Deason/Unsplash
This poem appeared in Island 167 in 2023. Order a print issue here.
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