Five Poems

by Roy Duffield

Sunshine

 after Louis Armand

phantom geckos or are they the shadows of roaches crawl the walls

infinitesimal

flicker in

out

in

out

appear on

vanish from the dirty-fingered unlit adobe doorway a solar flare, a dog’s shortest hair rubbed unknowing into your raw

eyeball to freefall

past your pupil

in a single

drop

an unheeded suicide against a background in watercooler conversation, a sand grain made its way into the developing photograph, the missed burnmark on an old film crying out, trying to tell someone

else it’s time to change

but if you take anything away with you

from this desert a single shell a fossil a diamond just lying there ownerless take

shelter from the sandstorm in an abandoned fridge-freezer unit how did it get there does it matter on that wild Atlantic shore left by a Berber nomad perhaps who, who knows, perhaps still living

the almost surety that this film will end in fin that the image will bleach hot white weathered nothing the sandstorm will suffocate not able to pull another breath the sandstorm will melt to glass the world will burn red consumed whole the sun will come for you and the geckos will only stay

if you want them to.

Untitled #1

as we hold

firm—the brain will store

this somewhere

anti(creation)-sonnet #05

 after Bill

Your kids hate   you.

Your         great, you

       r          great

                   great

grandkids don’t even know who the fuck you are

                                                                                     were

                    can’t even be arsed

to pay the ancestry.com membership

 (slash the rent on your bones)

to get your full

              mispelt name and profession:

                                              a job you did once

for someone

  ‘r other.

Untitled #2

healthy eating:

granola and blackcurrant

vodka

I touched his nob before he was king

We’re still standing

here outside this wall

(the barbs and cam’s,

they’ve had us all) running

from Newton St Loe

to Viscri to Breb

with the others who settled

in next door (but that was generations

before

this wall) we contemplate

stealing

a cheeky five-

minute break, a lean

on our by now toothless rake / what’s become

a nightly cliche: “standing on the outside

looking in”

the cosy yellow glow,

the roar within

the old-fashioned stove,

the pie on the sill

and the boarded-up door

stately

stating:

“Karly woz ere”

BIO: Roy Duffield is the author of Bacchus Against the Wall (Anxiety Press, 2023) and other words of his have been spotted entering such nefarious establishments as Versification, Cephalopress's Ink Sac, Osmosis, Revista Sinestesia, BlueHouse, Fevers of the Mind, Flights, Cajun Mutt Press, CỌ́N-SCÌÒ, and streetcake. They’ve won stuff, like the Robert Allen Micropoem Contest, and been nominated and shortlisted for other stuff, including the 2023 Still We Rise competition for revolutionary poems, inspired by Maya Angelou. Roy also helps edit Anti Heroin-Chic – “a journal that puts those on the outside inside”. Get in touch: linktr.ee/royduffield