Lydia Unsworth’s latest collections are Some Murmur (Beir Bua Press) and Mortar (Osmosis). Her most recent pamphlets are Residue (above/ground press), cement, terraces (Red Ceilings), and YIELD (KFS). Work can be found in places like Ambit, Banshee, Bath Magg, Blackbox Manifold, Shearsman, SPAM, Tentacular, and The Interpreter’s House.Twitter@lydiowanie
Newfoundland
everything so slow
hitchhiking down the only road
moose moose moose moose
moose on the road moose in the trunk of the truck
that’s picked us up
we were waiting for hours by the concrete hub
moose on the hiking trails moose in the lay-bys
moose blocking the entrances to all our pre-booked accommodations moose lingering by the table
as we try to dine
moose by the deep-fried chicken place that looks like a warehouse moose up by the only Norse settlement to be found outside of Europe moose in the van of that guy from Quebec who had driven down from Labrador just for the ride moose staying awake later than half-past nine
like someone took the land I knew
and blew it up
resized
driving ten hours long through ten hours of the same
old signs
slight variations in the pressure
shifting melodies on the radio
a change of accent
a different font relating the identical place names
of the slightly-different sites
the Irish flag flying high over the low-down bungalows
all coast-needy and foam-washed where the ochre rock
drops off into the great unknown
flickering in and out of my vision like the biography
of a parent
I want to sit in that tide and be pushed fossil-high
this whale-crumb inside foreshadowing these weeks
of nowhere
the etymology of my divergent futures
free-floating
like the tip of an iceberg
Obrońców Tobruku, Poland (the lost art of solitude)
the view was a sponge of knobbled pines
small beacon of hill then the frozen sea
sundays at the flea market
stained vests trying to learn a thing or two about my body
from above my body
wilting nipples, deforested hairs
shoulders shrugged to hungry earth
to all of the flies which died in that apartment
as I clicked shut the opening of my private estate
every buzz a semi-final
twitch against glass
in less than a hundred years
ivy had conquered the brickwork
padded the place
my dampened sound
and nobody knew if I was here
or on the straight road to and from the town
Traffic Island
We keep coming to this patch of land, roughly shaped like a letter Y. A wide road and cycle path run along one side and a clutch of factories lines the other. Various strands of land branch off, and various strands of canal cut us off from various neighbouring patches of landmass. The mustard plants are high today and the general greenery much thicker to walk among than previously. Dry patches on the road side, where last weekend plenty of daisy heads could be plucked from their stems. Last weekend, highland cows and highland-cow babies were grazing, separated from us by less than a metre of water like some impossible demand. And us, treading in goose shit and looking for swans through this bank of aluminium, hoping no one else would stop here.
Silos line the road, a gust of bubbles thoughtlessly blown out. Tens of lorries waiting for instruction face me as I sit and soak up this left-over atmosphere. Five concrete tubes have been added, roadside, by the swan’s nest. I think about pushing my baby through and making her enjoy it, but perhaps she’ll emerge into what might be oncoming traffic. Instead, I explain sitting on an egg by sitting on her and asking if she’s warm yet. She runs to the end of the Y’s left arm and back, stick-fishes for eels of slippery black grass in the navel of Y’s armpit. Flicks whatever she finds up into the air and in our eyes. We notice a section of long grassland on this occasion, wheat, I suppose, though I’m never entirely sure what I’m looking at. We walk the pre-walked path between the swaying fronds; I’m happy enough to be surrounded. The path leads to a gate, which, of course, is locked.
