Andrew Spragg lives in London, UK. Critical pieces and poetry have appeared in Bonafide, Chicago Review, Hix Eros, The Quietus, PN Review, Poetry London, Poetry Review and Poetry Wales. Recent books include Dogtown, (Litmus 2018, with the artist Beth Hopkins) and O Buster (Runamok 2021). OoP, a collected works of earlier pamphlets, came out with Veer2 in Summer 2022.
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I wonder often do I love this world,
and because of that then I’m mad to thrive.
If it is just one vast unlooking eye,
I want to sleep and be left in a peace
that only disturbs for a duckling’s flight.
I love that quack, its shadow playing plaits
of doleful water, mark a gap right here,
dividing without restraint, then as seen
cellular. Pity big furrows on men
for they are busy telling us some things
though neither useful, spirited nor fun.
Be direct about how emotion plays
the crowd and costs us less each time we speak.
By muting sense, we falter on first sight.
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When clouds have loomed, there is such thing as
too much for either pleasure, bird of flight
or feeling, wondering how do squid eat,
probably uneven with no expression,
a bit too beaky, jacket buttons fell
onto mosaic tiles then the moment passed.
How eggs set with a little bit of butter,
all this debris that gathered in my eye
I call it field of vision, call it much
or little, just delighted with its gaps.
There is a lot to look at sometimes, yep,
tell me what your intention is this hour,
I want my panic stopped, a bell that rings
then mutes. Too much will be made of it now.
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what was gestured in the lines, set about.
Trail the horizon don’t tell me what aspect,
on Friday then, then another matter -
that day you blanked on the stairs when the world
was well sprung, a lot of looking and not
much having - frankly the worst of it was
all this muttering about sent payments.
Located the point of minor transgressions:
arch in the corridor by the boiler.
You never quite believed you had a boiler.
You see the removal of said boiler
as an affront to everyone, so what?
I danced in the morning when the world
was begun, this same but mounted present.
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