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Twitter: @emsdenj Instagram: @jackemsden
this room I
is an interruption in the daily furniture a body overwhelmed by months of wildfires days straight of rain I could live this weather always the mutability of skin crumpled and morning-tired like bedding like we are whole climates altering forests retreating your voice like foliage opening a river overrunning its banks every particle caramelised a whole ambush of clouds singing the glamour of discarded outfits a conspiracy of socks bunched in every available cubby-hole find an opening and name it name ourselves after each other and everything in-between an accident of roots ambition of wetlands our large porous bodies always open always opening into another
this room II
is a dim-lit kitchenette because here we call it a kitchenette you are playing american sports in the back yard because here we call it a yard and it is fully summer in this winter poem the warm tartan of your body knowing itself as a body the soft pressure of barbeques on my lungs every day we throw a birthday party for ourselves in the dressing room mirror in our overlarge shirts the overlarge sleeves are like arms attached to our arms we have long given up the need for shoes my god can you feel love like milk in your throat like figs what to do with them look the strawberries are still ripe and in season the apples the oranges my god I want to hold you in a room full of apricots
the future
Lying among the chemicals
I’m overfilled, meat-sick, my organs
laid open to the heatswell. I’ve overgrown
the landscape of straight edges, synthetic angles,
where you could fold the badness of a body
neatly into a corner, let the throat wander
freely to the end of its rope, the future moored
offshore like a tanker. I’m left alone
clutching my talismans, afraid to light the candle, fit the leaf
in my palm like a rolled sock, slice my secrets like a lemon
and drink. Here, tenderness is a papercut
or an offering. Somewhere distant the past
rips open like a letter. How do you understand
this topography? A history of misremembering
violence as a well-worn coat
or a succession of brand new headaches?
Was the landslide personal or the great unruly world
concluding its consultations?
There’s always something else
happening inside the soil
of our daily emails. If I were to lay it out
like a memory
I would say we ran for the exit in a panic
of incomplete and overdue forms, in the carpark
care became ticketed and rigidly enforced, the architects
laughed while their buildings burned,
the sky overstuffed with smoke,
I felt the numb of it all as I joined
the slow carbohydrate march
of our apologies making their way
towards the coast, I too cut my knuckles
against the cliff edge of narrowing futures,
threw my abandoned promises
onto the rocks, carved out my name
and nothing crumbled, nothing gave itself away.
Let the records show
these were the conditions,
that there are always alternatives
until there aren’t. The tunnel walls
grew waterlogged, our protective suits
sutured onto skin. And very soon
came the counter-pressure of throats
swallowing themselves, the dawn unzipping
our sticky irregular hearts, tinned goods arranged
in the shape of crop circles. I only watched
from the side-lines, my tongue heavy
as an apple. Understand that I, like many others, was afraid
of the future untethered and spinning
and all I could think was to hold the railing
as the world spilled over. Every day
I live like this. Waking tired
as rent payments, I carry my collection of disasters
from the memory of the office, consolidate my language
beside the bonfire. I don’t know how to ask for help,
I don’t know what I need. This is a very ordinary fear.
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