School of Forgery (Salt Modern Poets) - Tapa blanda

Acerca del autor

Jon Stone was born in Derby and lives in London. His work has been performed on radio and published in national newspapers, as well as in poetry anthologies themed around imitation, formal innovation, science fiction, mythology and the erotic. He won a Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award in 2012 and the Poetry London Prize in 2014 and 2016. He edits compendiums of visual, ecological and experimental poetry through Sidekick Books, which he co-runs with Kirsten Irving.

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And why do you want to work for the Secret Service?

So that I can show up at your door,

soaked as Shelley, face half-masked in blood,

seven months from now, when things get dire.

I’ll ask to use the phone, then make a thud

– semi wet sack, semi fumbled spud ―

collapsing as I lunge for the receiver

and sink at once into a storm-rich fever.

And in my fever, half-formed sentences

in such a swirl of languages will spill,

like diamonds from a slit purse or the slurs

of water from an overburdened pail

or tortured faucet, from my mouth’s bashed grill.

And some of it will be intelligence.

And some of it you’ll think makes too much sense.

Since some of it will be just what you dreamt

of us, our future, dog-drunk at your post ―

our long weekends abroad, the early Klimt

in a palace in a town near Bucharest,

muralling the film-projector-blessed

Sala de Teatru, where we pause

for half a reel of Rashomon, half of Jaws.

Then at a Czech zoo, watching otters stuff

their semi-feline mouths, one munching on

half a crayfish while the unmunched half

weakly plays piano upside down,

its jelly oozing silver in the sun.

And somewhere in that jelly ― vital organs.

And somewhere in my babble, talk of dragons.

In seven days, I’ll finally come round.

Not knowing your bed or room, I’ll try to bolt

but you being there, you’ll intercept mid-bound

and down I’ll go, like something shoddily built.

You’ll tumble with me and we two will melt

into a single entity, half urgent

messenger of night, half secret agent.