The Haberdasher
by Jason Wilkinson
…wants a
perambulant to phone
electrodes snatch the bluff,
how this road curves
like the flat aciculate spine
of a Mayan dagger
around it
freckled & gelid
water shifting hotel candles
thrown light some say
that the old man used
butterflies to paper
his dinsome albatross
;wings clap to a forgotten trance
…on the landing she takes your coat,
demure plaits gray
wooden eyes
evaporate behind a
calamitous perfume of sliding doors
obliquely she imagines your voice
receding, into the distant rain-
miasmic fingers tug at a silvern hasp
buoyant and perspicuous
tin flowers
…there’s a boathouse down the strand
its long roof scribbled against
freckles of indigo
anarchic branches heaving cleverly
tapping just above our heads
cables in their tweed
dusty jackets criss-crossed
beneath the orange lamp
our skin appears tenuous
the canonical sotto voce
of jaundiced newsprint
upholstered, scatological
its staid countenance
regarding us with anesthetic despondency
through holes in the unshod timber.