Ewen Glass
Ilium (Holiday)
Render – by hip-bone – lines in the sand;
with heat of sun and complicit lung
they might be blown to glass columns,
a thermometer without mercury,
a cocktail stirrer with ache to shatter,
useless by shape of its creation:
a couple on a beach –
turning away from each other.
Recording Sessions
Minor-key moans across the ward. I hear in you an orchestra, and
want to record it. Can any of these machines do that? A mask edits
breath, tubes clean the hiss from your blood; the smell of the
hospital is the space around the mic, a fetid admission cut with
alcohol. I was always going to be invited to this public arrangement,
poised perhaps to –
The time you share a bed or a hug doesn’t last long even if our
arms are ouroboros snakes like you said your sobs during I
dreamed a dream embarrassed even me and I had to take you out
of the theatre so the rest of the audience could hear the show and
tears turned to laughter between us sustaining an evening and
thousands more your laugh is an oboe no sweeping strings here
bending through depth and demand to my basest safest place
howl or rattle I always want to hear you now the beeps count you
in let me throw flowers
Ewen is a Northern Irish poet who lives in England with two dogs, a tortoise and lots of self-doubt; on a given day, any or all of these can be snapping at his heels. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in HAD, Bridge Eight, Poetry Scotland, Gordon Square Review, and elsewhere.
