Three Poems
by Tempest Miller
Nerve Centre
Banana dress, he wears as he walks in the prevailing wind of the beach.
He knows too well that a day is fleeting,
crushed in an instant like a soda can.
And he goes through town walking very quickly inland from the sea and cove.
He walks over bridges and steps on storm drains.
The bells of townspeople Morris dancers follow him everywhere
as he retreats beneath rumbling skies to degenerate old churchyards.
His dress becoming a wispy and flamboyant skirt,
a golden thread.
In the churchyard as the grave keeper.
That is his job.
What a strange town.
Hiding under graveyard trees that grow
very thick and large with free branches,
digging up muck,
tossing it filled with bones over his shoulder.
Rabbits in the graveyard.
This town with all its dead people,
the demography forever trending towards old and white
and dispassionate conservatism,
have entrusted their bones,
corpses to someone so glorious.
Everything so disparate in this graveyard,
him the completely bespeckled, all-knowing oneness of man.
Like the Buddha.
Looking at him you come to understand he is not only a grave keeper,
but a treasurer,
arbiter of the whole town and its traditions,
like a guard at the Tower of London.
He is not ideological but relentlessly scientific
in his understanding of past and present.
He wishes to influence the long-term,
sees everything as malleable, an institution, and men and women cast in nickel,
lead.
To fall in love with the man in the banana dress,
to sail out to enveloped, murky islands of disease,
eating exotic cuisine and dirty-cheap tacos,
and stand in the castle halls of mirrors.
Across the room from each other,
the spices still on our lips,
jousting in a prism of royal glass.
That is the nerve centre of all I want.
*Originally published in the chapbook England 2K State Insekt.
Ass
A donkey bites my hair
a bear hides in a tree
but the donkey kicks back legs into a woodburner
and lets go
in the external world
which my psychologist friend describes as ‘oceanic’
the donkey finds and eats another donkey
lodged at his benthos
and assumes his form
and runs into the desert
River Mouth
Down at the river mouth
feeding the dog a bone he turns to liquid
arriving with a mahogany scent
with bells
with a birthmark
a crown of bones
on the folly over the water
a bearded man dragging a bag of coins up the beach land
the waves spray
unbridled against the galleon loaded with coffins
I have the salt on my ribs until nightfall
a new year ushered in
with dogs and the smell of cake and fish
the hoops of my majestic jacket unbound
I go to sleep early
and my heart thumps the whole bed
searching for the poet’s passion
not yet in love
not yet a Lord among the divine
but soon
he in the dark
the blood breaking from his valves
the world long
infinite
the sleepless nights encompass the full universe
my heart throbbing
rested on a dark, lonely mattress
BIO: Tempest Miller (he/him) is a queer writer from the UK. He publishes a monthly chapbook on Amazon. His work has appeared in JAKE, Boats Against the Current and Swamp Pink. His instagram is @tempestm1ller.