by Jacob Polley
and the future, which came as a shock
when I first began to
drink it instead of pulling the plug
the rain’s turning to sleet
snakes eat their old skins,
dogs their own sick
Jackself steps out from under the eaves and squats
to give his reflection in the first puddle
on the gravel path
a lick
Snow Dad
won’t he do,
Jackself says, longing at the red
front door of Lamanby
behind the door is the great hall
and black stove he and Jeremy Wren could be
sitting in front of
with buttered crumpets and sugary tea,
taking turns to gob on the hotplate and consider
each frothy gob’s
bead-dance and shrivel to a brief darkness
on the iron
WAKE UP
Wren yells, and Jackself starts
back into snow-glare and the cold
that’s radiating from the white
nine-foot dad Wren’s
had them build to replace his own
if you go to sleep, that’ll be it,
Wren says
I climbed
into a chest freezer once
and before I could tell my lolly from my lick-stick
I was tucked up toasty warm,
a bag of petit pois for a pillow
there’s no dreaming,
he says, when you’re dead
what do you want a new old
man for anyhow, Jackself says, shivering
so I can give him a smile
stonier than a lip smile
poke myself
in the eyes on his hand sticks
run clean through him
and leave a me-hole
hide a penny in his body
so when he’s gone, I get it back
Pact
Jeremy Wren puts a finger-pistol
to his temple
and fires
Jackself steps off
a thirteenth floor
hold on, hold on,
Wren says
you can’t speak, Jackself says,
your head’s blown off
if I can’t, you can’t,
Wren says
I’m still falling, Jackself says,
his arms rigid
at his sides
quick then,
write a note, Wren says
and write one for me
while you’re at it
I can’t write you a note,
I don’t know why you’ve done it
I’ll tell you, Wren says, just get your pen
and pocketbook out of your pocket
and scribble yours
before you hit the ground
Jackself sighs
but does as he’s told
what have you written, Wren says
I’m not telling you
what,
Wren says, and narrows his eyes
you think I don’t have my own reasons
I’ll show you, he says,
and he storms home, stamps upstairs,
throws a dressing-gown cord
over the rafter in his bedroom,
pulls the slipknot over his head
then kicks away the women’s underwear
catalogues he’s balancing on
and hangs thinking fuck I’ve left
no note until he’s fucking dead
The Hole
they’ve put Jeremy Wren in a box
the children ask, is Jeremy in the box
yes, Jeremy’s in the box
say the pale adults who hold their leaky faces
above the children’s heads
it’s hard for Jackself to hold
in his head the box that holds Jeremy Wren
his shirt collar frets
his black shoes are Frankenstein to walk in
Jeremy Wren’s
choked his way into a box
he just isn’t here
and who’s to say he’s in the box
he isn’t in the box,
the adults say to the older ones
he’s leapt clear
and left his empty body in the box
for us to get rid of
he was always leaving
us to tidy up
but there’s a hole in the grass
to hurry his mess into
is this what they mean by grieving
wet-combed hair, flannelled ears
and a look at the hole in England where Jeremy Wren will sleep
will not sleep, but rest
will not rest, but lie
wide awake, staring at the underside of the lid
Jack O’Lantern
the leaves are slimy yellow light
the year’s a sticky door
the wind bangs in the barest trees
and shakes the apple core
no
again
the leaves are slime
the year a bloodshot eye
the trees the rooms of bedlamites
with bars across the sky
the wind’s inside the apple core
the moon bangs like a drum
and
no
again
the sky’s a door
the year a slum
the wind a house of bedlamites
with trees in every room
the leaves attached like leather straps
and light a yellow spoon
the moon’s beside the
no
again
the year breaks down the door
the leaves are shut inside the trees
the trees in apple cores
the wind bangs in the barest rooms
of bedlam
no
again
the leaves are rooms, the
no
the moon’s
a
no
the year a vein
of narrow gold, the trees gold flakes
the leaves gold leaves, the wind
a whiny
no
again
the rakes
are brooms, the moon is skinned
and
no again
the bedlamites
have wedged the no
again
the wind is bare and yellow spoons
are banging on the brain
the year’s wedged shut with apple cores
the no a leather stain
the slimy moon an open sore
and every room the same
Redbreast
Jackself’s in the outdoors, mucky snow
still hanging on sticks and slushed
against the roadside,
the wind in his face, his hands claws
and there’s nowhere to go that isn’t toe-
stubbing stone
or a dripping blackwood
the fields stuck
full of stalks,
the sky torn polythene, flapping
how long
since Jeremy Wren went into the earth
like a seed potato
no
like a sunflower seed
no
like a seed potato
livid-skinned, with unseeing eyes
and hair-sprouts
Jackself has three lines of a song
that aren’t even three
because one’s a repeat
sing them anyhow, Jackself
I see a robin redbreast in a blackthorn tree
I see a robin redbreast in a blackthorn tree
the seasons turn but all year round it’s wintertime in me
The Misery
Jackself has rent his jeans, is shrunk
into an armchair in Lamanby
while the year wheels
round and the days pass like light
between the spokes
ash under his eyes
and his fingernails, sweepings for his meals,
his face battered, sorrow-bright
he needs a quest, thinks Jeremy Wren,
who’s been watching Jackself from the coals
of the stove
across the fields, into a copse where a black pond lies
staring, Wren drifts with the chimney smoke
and settles like goose-down on the water
wake
up, Wren says, and the pond
blinks
to the door of Lamanby they come, tales
of chewed off tractor tyres, blood clots
in the milk, trampled corn, midnight snuffles
at virgins’ bedroom windows, weird
fires in unpeopled places, slime
on doorbells and apple trees, headaches,
power cuts, bankruptcies, skid marks
on the seesaw and whipworms in the ale
squeaky voices from the topside of the world
tell them, but Jackself lifts his grief-mask
a little to listen
he’s at the keyhole
for Jenny Reid’s testimony at the kitchen table
she glimpsed the monster
goat’s ears,
chapped lips
by the mothy glow of the village phone box
there’s a tickle
electric, thawing
and Jackself’s deep blue
indifference to brushing his teeth and wearing clean socks
is dislodged in a slump like a snow crust
from his weapon chest,
the sheath knife, Eglantine
from his wardrobe,
his denim jacket, torch, tool belt, tin camping cup,
rucksack, horned hat and Gore-Tex breastplate
for six days and nights he tracks the fiend,
dipping his cup at cattle troughs, gnawing
the kernels from beech nuts, the marrow
from earthworms, and at dusk
on the seventh day he enters the copse
fishhook twigs, deveining briars
cold fuming from the leaf-mulch floor,
then the knockerless basalt door
of the pond on which he hammers
twice with the bone hilt of Eglantine
tarry bubbles
break
and from them, word by word, a voice like a fart
asks
who is this halfwit who brings his heart
happy to my larder
hey, Jackself cries,
I bet you lick the undersides
of stones, the black chassis of trucks in laybys,
asking who am I
deep in the pond, past shelf
after grisly shelf, the monster is laired,
listening
how does he know,
it thinks
hey, Jackself cries,
I bet you’re loved like a motorway
service station litterbin
yes, the monster says to itself,
whoever you are, you understand
hey, Jackself cries, I bet you sing
with the wind through the rust-holes
in the corrugated iron roof
of a shed where no one goes
I do,
the monster says
I do
but that won’t stop me
skinning you
and up, up
into the lightening
green silence kicks
the creature, dismembering hands
clasped like a bride’s
and Jackself is thrown back
at its bursting through,
the pond smashed miles
into the night and falling
as foul rain onto his face,
and his body mounted and churned
deeper into the slurry by the Misery’s
writhing down on top of him
with all its gristly weight
but skin me, Jackself says,
and you’d see I’m
monster underneath
and he rips out the Misery’s
throat with his teeth
Jackself’s Boast
I am hero, a harrower of hellish meres
and dragon haunts,
demolisher of demons, overlord
of ogres, wyverns
I feel sick
moans Jackself as he stumbles home
in the dark, the Misery’s head heavy in his rucksack
sawing it off
he’d blunted his knife on the spinal cord
then fouled his jeans and lost his footing
in slicks of blood as he’d hauled
at the flaps of hacked-open hide,
his knife-hand so slippery he’d nicked
the bowel and gagged at the reek
that hosed out, steaming
hard to feel heroic
when you’re up to your armpits
in dog meat, and what’s Jackself
to show for it but a suit of gore
that’s stiffened to him,
a ratty, still wet skin
and between his shoulder blades
the weight of the dead
face he’s sure is Jeremy Wren’s
no
if it was his, he’d be calling
Jackself softshite
and worse through the webbing
but Wren is gone
and here Jackself is slammed
by his loss as he hasn’t been
and starts bawling
into his crusty, stinking hands
by the time he’s under the outside light
of Lamanby, Jackself’s shaken his heart
clean and full of fresh night air,
and on the doorstep
he undoes his rucksack to find
a rabbit’s head
A Haunting
Jackself is sitting on the wall
outside Lamanby, watching the thingamybob, whatsit-
called, rising
it’s prettier than a suicide’s face,
Jeremy Wren says, but there’s something about it
of the death’s head
shut up,
Jackself says, you’re still
full of shit
me, Wren says
you’re the one moping
you shouldn’t even be here, should you,
Jackself says
aren’t there rules
this is a haunting,
Wren says, and it’s perfectly within the law,
such as it is
with his forefinger Wren is stroking a great
moth that purrs
like a cat
have you, Jackself says quietly, met anyone
do you think I’d be here gassing to you if Marilyn Monroe was upstairs
Jesus, it’s like
well, never mind
like what, Jackself says
just watch the pretty stone
and forget it, Wren says
they sit,
gazing up at the unmentionable
when I’m on the toilet, Jackself says, I imagine you
watching me
yes, Wren says, we all are
me, Shakespeare,
Einstein, Joan of Arc
we all make sure to never miss
a poo
I think it’s giving me
issues,
Jackself says
don’t talk to me about issues, Wren says,
look at this old sheet I have to wear
it’s then the moth
wobbles into the dark air
and up towards the unutterable thing
you know I’ve got nothing
on under it, Wren shouts,
