Crash, I Said

There were hazards, as they say, there.
Hidden driveways. There’s always random. You don’t know
whether Schrödinger’s cat will be alive or dead when

you open the box. You only
observe. Is this a diversion, the wrong route? Try
to decide just how your interaction with the cat

kills it. You don’t kill it. Something
already dead was sauntering out of its drive
towards the road where I was happy theorising

oneness, unnecessariness
of closure. Perhaps I thought immortality.
Luckily the dead person didn’t believe in that

and gave way, giving me my head
past the camera. It was that kind of road: not built
up but long inhabited, not broad but wide enough,

so its hazards didn’t faze me.
I’ll reoffend and sometimes not against the law
but against my own judgement. It is when unzoned worlds

look out for me, pull out the dead
from under my wheels, or just cats, I kill nothing
or can kill nothing, over and over. Oh, I see

just reader: count, of my three justs,
how many positive, how many negative.
On balance – live, die – vision isn’t a simple thing.

 

 

 

My Friends’ Half Marathon

Girls and lay on its course. As Paige
and while people. (Whatever you.)

Had something door? Since we sometimes
it, right thing that when one shoulder.

What happens to take fear of feet
Greenwich? ‘Magma,’ muttered the Dub

‘when they shall be right hang on them.’
It hurt. Well as though Derry leaned

over Jake were running, dropping
his arms around his hawken. ‘Once

again and not be here?’ Iuthie
coming digitigrade. ‘Where you

need it,’ (aside her voice) bare thing –
dromomania Josiah.

‘By Judith bronte,’ Izzie smiled
‘the hot election of this speech.’

 

 

 

Separation Season

Cold bamboo
was hatching, cross-hatching; dead
stem arches

aisled the field. Tractors decayed
at the edge.
Drivers had thrown to rot what

will not rot.
Our plan had wintered. Though
branches milled

their twigs to silver, still ice
crawled away
from what it had taken on

and the sun
stopped chasing mist to wire
and rays woke

mistletoe to emerald
on the oak.
Our jewels had nested here.

Diamonds,
opals begged don’t repeat us
dissolve us.

Move, I said, now you can move.
Fissured field,
frozen for months, you’ve rested.

 

 

 

 

[Claire Crowther’s third collection, On Narrowness, is due from Shearsman in March 2015 and her pamphlet, Silents, from Hercules Press in April 2015.]

Copyright © 2014 by Claire Crowther, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.