from FIGURE DETACHED, FIGURE IMPERMANENT
by Scott Thurston
A series of trials set up like islands in a river — noticing where a current is viable even in concealment. A perfect will turns like a needle as a thread of disgust stitched through every day starts to come undone. You slip into the stream.
***
Consenting out of fear you grasp each word as a thing, trying to create your own knowledge. As a remedy an exchange of energy occurs — a constant circulation against the monotony of your endless self-assertion.
***
In a discipline without discipline, writing becomes a preparation for a ritual in which you are less afraid. A grounded sense of being in the dirt — the strata underlying the line in space standing across from it. A crisis of embodiment: if we are not diverse why can’t you bequeath me your wealth, swept away whilst more outside yourself than before?
***
Prove that you reflect the thoughts I think, that we impress the sphere that impresses us, that the world above forms that below. What the annual marker makes in the third age is a witness to movement that falls short in a split, rapt mind until the new notes invite to a new dancing.
***
A man stands by his neighbour, opens him up to see how he works; viscera sliding out like abandoned fears. Discovering the thigh muscles he becomes fascinated — eternity’s too short. Still thinking about time, he finds it more difficult to create than destroy, as he starts to extend into the space beyond his skin.
***
Do nothing but reflect as you hold the flaming torch in the unbridled moment of taking off. Draw your efforts towards the spectacle of the line, noting the lessons of a fowl on the land, on the water, in the air. Still your presence drawn from a well to trust more and more in service to a servant.
Scott Thurston is a poet based in the North West of England where he runs a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Salford. His books include Reverses Heart’s Reassembly (Veer Books, 2011), Of Being Circular (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2010), Internal Rhyme (Shearsman, 2010), Momentum (Shearsman, 2008) and Hold (Shearsman, 2006). He writes critically on contemporary poetry, co-edits the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry and co-organizes The Other Room poetry reading series.
