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James McConachie
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the poet
James McConachie was born in the UK but has lived for the past 17 years in a remote farmhouse in Spain’s coldest, emptiest inland province. He's turned his hand to more jobs than he feels are worthy of mention, and is never happier than when finding himself lost at high altitude on horseback with only the wind, vultures and music of Hildegard Von Bingen for company. Aside from poetry, James has written prose for the Dark Mountain project, and has more in the pipeline.
the poems
first post
dry heave, I ball my fists
or bang my head off the table,
I might weep into the dark corner
of our stupored soul
for knowing and forgetting
all those moments
of nothing grace
a mother wets a tissue,
wipes a streak of blood
from her child’s face
yet swept into the fire
the eternal touch of honeyed hand
Iskander scores the sky to the east
and for what? small fears
the language or the naming
of the land, or some fucking flags
always the same shit
reasons, always forgotten
but sorrow filths up the crescent
beneath the nails forever
and it will be written
we should. have done. better.
dry heave, I ball my fists
bang my head off the table,
and weep again, this morning
it seems there’s always time
for another cold horror,
another mother’s letter
liebre
three days of gales and
I’m meshed into a tousled briar,
clearing the corral, all thorns
the handstain fruit
long wintered away
oil can chimes giving it the full four clangs
slices and scratches
of maybes and should’ves
the blood the wind and the want
give life, their constant
brutal diligence, the letters laid
in winter’s bright book of hours
the garden, knee deep
in my dereliction,
sees the sun as it lands
but doesn’t stick somehow
the sky, a haze of headaches and icy hostilities
bustling up over the tops and away
out on the campo, a hare flickers
under the cloud shadow, shrieking
across the field, almost dark
I gather logs, the stars show again
so heaven’s veil is torn
just a little, at the hem
longings
oneday, imma dance like a dervish out of the dark
scoop gold pennies from the sky
scatter quinces at your feet, found at last
your cool hand in the bright bower, oneday
oneday, imma song the things I shoulda said
to the silence of the windless glade
and if unheard, it will only hope
to summon the breeze, to the daylong quiet shade, oneday
oneday, imma shine the nightingale’s silver lyre
pluck such tunes
as only a god might whisper to a bird,
all sighs and secrets, to leaven the unhurried word, oneday
oneday, imma speak the mark and measure of this time
the sneaking sand, the simple sorrows, the
the supermarket savagery
of war’s fire and lime, oneday
oneday, imma swim all the way over the ocean
to the very rim of the world, the paper cowl
will shrink and shrivel, just as it should
the forgotten face, the skin uncurled, that was my own, oneday
oneday, imma find the boy who startled the stars, who shares my smile
then inks together these battered bars
drinks deep the rushing sap, beneath the ragged bark
oneday, imma dance like a dervish, out of the dark
Publishing credits
All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb
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