Leaving the Ark, I had this new place pegged as
just another hyper-crescendo, ape-jinks and birdsong.
On mantle and plain the city was seething, sweaty
with light – the city beamed all its gigawatts
like a lonesome pyre; the ocean bristled and buoyed.
Of course, back then I wanted – with a tug
sure as entropy – the old country, old boys;
wanted the swank of ’73
when the ballroom at Valhalla G16
breathed me in to its lacquered belly, and
mirrorwalls proliferated us to old infinity infinity.
Beneath the cigar-smoke haloes, our bodies
were buoyed to the Nth degree, sharp as glass –
and our chatter pure algebra – not this city argot of boom-
cha boom-cha, birdsong delirium.
Often, I scramble my signals. I dis-appear, become
pure Ark data but those ape-jinks are infectious, mind.
That birdsong keeps on: jiggers me, queasy, into being.
KATE POTTS’ first collection was Pure Hustle (Bloodaxe, 2011). Her pamphlet, Whichever Music (tall-lighthouse, 2008) was a Poetry Book Society Choice, and her work has also been published in a number of anthologies.