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Poets
Writing
Walking
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Beyond



Zoë Skoulding



Variants on a Polish Fragment

 After Julia Fiedorczuk

this is glass this is szkła or szkło depending on where
it catches the light and I can’t see anything through it
only hear the rasp of broken bottles
swept across a beach where I’m walking
towards you with bare feet in this variant
salt air wears the edges smooth

words are sharp against the town’s low roar
but blur your ears and traffic turns tidal every step
leaves a white wave of salt on my shoes
in wody wielkie in vast waters I could
drown in the undertow of any language
in this variant it would make no difference

if green’s as green as zieleń I am walking through it
scent of cut grass on the rubbish tip
overhang of leaves dripping on the pavement
in this variant I’m spit and shadow ticking inches
over earth’s impossible face this is how close I am
when shades of meaning grow luminous

in this variant I’m split in glass with one face to the street
and one tilted into planes where colours
fold back in silence the smell of rain
vanishes in the future there is no drizzle only
specks of scattered shine across a lens
in this variant you can’t hear me coming


it’s a city that asks questions, gives no answers

after  Sigurbjörg Þrastardóttir

 we may still cry in taxis
           though behind the window
it’s not winter the electricity
            grids are humming
there has never been a word
            for crossfire in this language
shuffle the deck which one
            will you choose how will you
construct a house of cards
            so the stones won’t fall
below the currency the city
            has thirteen hearts and none of them
is beating the circulation
            gone you play your hand
in this uncertain state
            it was not a heart attack
when he fell his ear
            pressed to the ground for
six-month-old information
            or digital toxic waste
grassed over the carbon cost
            of data cold enough to handle
she signs five times to say yes
            this is the whole truth all of it


In Kazimierz, Kraków

 After Ingmāra Balode

the green tea sachet on the saucer
is proof that I’ve been to the café in your poem
        where the tables are old sewing machines
waiting for chance encounters with umbrellas

    like this one
        still glinting with rain

outside
        the snow that fell in your poem
                has turned to drizzle
and seeped through the stitching of my boots

    a row of heads stretches out
                behind a candle
but none of them contains the poem
        sleeping in the cracked mirror

street names thread the city
            wicking up the past
    to flare in Esther Street where
in the marketplace I tried on someone else’s clothes
    they didn’t fit it doesn’t matter but

so much depends
upon

a red-curtained
window

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
Easter eggs*
            and violins
on the stereo
        scraped strings from
just around the corner in another time
where frozen music thaws on the tongue

*at this point William Carlos Williams sighs


The museum for disappearing sounds

 exhibit 1

 in breath a crackle of static
disturbance
    a detuned radio in one lung

drones erase each other
    electricity sings in D
tyres slur across the street

a shoreline just out of sight
        at the base of the skull


you hold the rise
and decay in its arc
        before dispersal
in wind on the microphone

cough in wave forms
count the layers

but when the light goes quiet
you sleep under air
            roaring
through the tunnel of your throat


exhibit 2

 today I’m dripping into forests
       far into sleep
where you can’t find me
cannot catalogue the rustle of larch
unpick
    pixel by pixel
the stones under my feet

exhibit 3

in thin vibrations of the phone
a voice shimmers on the end of a line

 
while outside
        ring dove calls
slip over branches into memory

breath hops and starts
    is this is this is this is this is this
I vanish in lossy compression

birds listen
        come in and drop out

the rhythms that cradle us
turn to an I-you stammer of ringtones
on the nervous system’s high whine


exhibit 4

in a frame of silence
            the spectrum
    shivers into transmission

in a forest of black and white
        off-channel        branches
interlace over water    dark
    and interrupted light

the moon is close    closer
or retreating
behind the traffic far off

        coming and going
accelerates to slow-mo as rhythm
turns to pitch and sinks to drone


Bangor Mountain

somone’s flung aside
       a pair of jeans
                plastic
lids of bottles
        cardboard
    from an instant barbecue


and only the sky picks anything up

glazed roof of the arcade (empty now)
    forget-me-nots under our feet

this sky you speak across
                your voice
bouncing off rock

                the city
flashes back
        a blue drone of traffic

as if in the distance all that’s disparate
        could be caught
in the echo of one voice
            a single colour


Nowa Huta

proof I’ve been east to the steel town
    that’s part of someone else’s story
        is a crumpled ticket in my pocket
            stamped on the number 4 tram
every compass point is marked
    by a road every archway leads
        to a courtyard a turned page a tilt
            in the day’s identical rhythm
I steel myself against the lines
    of songs sleeping in the concrete
        where windows hold their breath
            pulled to the centre I sleep
in the machine of narrative
    the Avenue of Roses blooms
        beyond flakes of rust
            rain from the ceiling


Building Site

Between the buildings
                                    trees reach down
            to languages
                                    of soil and worms,
                                               leaves gloss argots of glass and steel;
            woods lie down on floors
                                                            to bounce back
every word       every word
                                                you speak
with the long
            echo of your footsteps down into the mud.

In simultaneous decay and growth       
                                                            this maze of streets and squares           
puts down its roots
                        unsettling the ground
                                                with every new inflection, every
demolition: first the trees, then the wooden
                                                houses, bricks, the broken concrete.
Look,
            now you can see in the ruins how
                                    buildings took hold and pushed up
            through your bones, rubble, walls of earth,
                                                this tangle of useless pipes.

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News archive