Mark Antony Owen

the poet
Syllabic poet Mark Antony Owen writes exclusively in nine original forms – sometimes, with variations. His work centres on that world where the rural bleeds into the suburban: a world he calls ‘subrural’. Based in East Hampshire, Mark is the author of digital-only poetry project Subruria, as well as the founder, editor, designer, sound engineer and publisher of iamb.
the poems
Every petal on their skin a mouth
for the light, digesting the sun
to make it sweet, make it edible.
Alchemy at work in the slender bones
slipping from dresses, print by print;
lawns showered by the tattering silks,
the scatter of magnolia feathers.
The trial of the bloom begins.
Reward us for the rains, for the heat.

A dog escaped from its yard,
straying from the bounded woods,
you drop like a ripened fruit –
slip from your disguise of fog
to reveal the awkward wedge
of you, disrobed and alert.
The sprung trap of your leaping;
desperate kick at the wire
wall that separates our worlds.
You are willing me to freeze,
be you, and instinctively,
my muscles seize with your fear.

You are in a designated public place,
watching a thin stegosaurus of bunting
get battered by the wind. The Jubilee beds,
crowned by grey roses; the never-ending rain.
This time of year there would normally be stalls,
bouncy castles, young mothers wiping picnics
from the faces of toddlers. Look up and you
might see swifts, winding invisible maypole
streamers round the shifting contrail of a jet.
Today, swings unswung, slick, unclimbable frames.
You are in a designated public place,
yet you’ve never felt more private in your life.
Come again when the bins are dizzy with wasps
and the bandstand buzzes with hits you can hum –
before that old gaoler winter chains the gates.
Publishing credits
​
All poems: forthcoming to Subruria
​
Bloom: nominated for The Pushcart Prize
by the readers of Black Bough Poetry
Muntjac / A designated public place: Places of Poetry