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This collection first published 2017
Poems by Sam Riviere copyright © Sam Riviere 2012, 2014, 2015, 2017
Poems by Frederick Seidel copyright © Frederick Seidel 1963, 1980, 1989, 1998, 2006, 2009, 2012, 2016, 2017
Poems by Kathryn Maris copyright © Kathryn Maris 2006, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017
The moral right of the authors has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-141-98708-8
SAM RIVIERE
from 81 Austerities
Crisis Poem
The Sweet New Style
Dream Poem
No Touching
Year of the Rabbit
The Council of Girls
You There in the Shadows
Personal Statement
My Face Saw Her Magazine
from Standard Twin Fantasy
from Kim Kardashian’s Marriage
Beautiful Pool
Grave Sunsets
Thirty-Three Sincerity
American Sincerity
Beautiful Sunglasses
Infinity Berries
Beautiful Dust
Infinity Sincerity
Grave Dust
Preferences
Mindfulness
Conscious Uncoupling
White Pizza
True Colours
Christmas in Berlin
In Praise of the Passivity of Paper
You Must Leave All Your Belongings Behind
Solitaire
FREDERICK SEIDEL
Wanting to Live in Harlem
Fucking
Robert Kennedy
The Blue-Eyed Doe
Vermont
Racine
Kill Poem
Poem Does
Barbados
Climbing Everest
Broadway Melody
Arnaut Daniel
One Last Kick for Dick
The Death of the Shah
City
Sunset at Swan Lake
France Now
Me
Miss Charlotte
KATHRYN MARIS
Transference
Street Sweeper
Goddess
God Loves You
This is a Confessional Poem
It was a Gift from God
On Returning a Child to Her Mother at the Natural History Museum
Bright Day
The Devil Got into Her
Darling, Would You Please Pick Up Those Books?
The Tall Thin Tenor
Last Supper
Will You Be My Friend, Kate Moss?
Number Plate Bible
Variations on Melissanthi’s ‘Atonement’
The House with Only an Attic and a Basement
Ladies’ Voices
Singles Cruise
Here is the Official Line on Attire
The X Man
Ooga-Booga Cento
How to be a Dream Girl not a Doormat about the ‘Ex’
Angel, Katherine: Dream
Demon
The summer day the spike went into my
Catherine and Her Wheel (III)
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
In 3 years I have been awarded
£48,000 by various funding bodies
councils and publishing houses
for my contributions to the art
and I would like to acknowledge
the initiatives put in place
by the government and the rigorous
assessment criteria under which
my work has thrived since 2008
I have written 20 or 21 poems
developed a taste for sushi
decent wine bought my acquaintances
many beers many of whom have
never worked a day in their lives
how would you like to touch my palm
and divine how long my working
week has been mostly I watch films
and stare and try to decide what
to wear speaking as a poet I would
rather blow my brains out than run
out of credit as the biographer
of the famously unresolved
50s poet-suicide has commented
capital is the index of meaning
anything is better than stealing
from the Co-op with a clotted heart
without it you don’t survive
she looks out of her
photo let’s call her emma
with a mute appeal that might
mean something like ‘whenever
you want just say I’m ready to be taken
away from all this’ she is so shy
her eyes follow your eyes
over the girlish slopes and crests
hidden by her baggy cardigan jennifer
I mean emma let me assure you
your shyness has never been
so completely justified
I know what you’re thinking
it’s dull unless they’re sex dreams
dreams about violent murders
mine are pretty banal
I dreamed I wrote a poem
beginning ‘Hi!’ and ending ‘See You Later!’
the middle part was amazing
that’s the part I don’t remember
I was sitting on a platform high above the jungle
this all feels really familiar
probably from something I’ve seen on TV
I was dressed up as a witch doctor
and used this stick of judgement
taking back the names of creatures
restoring them to myth I was doing wisely with it
in my dream the poem didn’t have
this assonance that’s creeping in
after I’d taken back everything
I kept hold of my stick using it
to designate the categories that really matter
while adding bones and wings to my hat
sitting up here out of danger
I hate this / I like that
I would like to ruin your life
let it not be said I lack the necessary
imagination to be jealous
I would ask you to tell no one about us
and if you tell no one about us
I’ll fight hard to hide my disappointment
I would like you to renounce your past
as quite a big mistake
it will mean something although I
will never completely forgive you
I think you represent
the possibility in my life of renewal
I would like people to say
‘she came back a different person’
we will appear at the weddings
of people we don’t care about
our faces radiant from fucking
there is no purer form of advertising
than writing a poem
that’s what the monk told me
if I were a conceptual artist
I would make high-budget trailers
of john updike novels but no actual movie
the scene where angstrom drives towards
the end of his life down a street in the suburbs
lined with a type of tree he’s never bothered
to identify and laden with white blossoms
reflecting slickly in the windscreen
I would fade in the music
as the old song was fading out
keeping the backing vocals at the same distance
kind of balancing the silence
the word RABBIT appears in 10-foot trebuchet
Today I stand before you
uncertain of my guilt
of what I am accused
or should say sorry for
your eyes are screwed
like knots in wood
filled with the suggestive quiet
of trees gossiping telepathically
maybe it would help
if I recited in an Irish accent
or sang a little song
your faces grow more beautiful
as I am wired to the lie detector
crueller yet more pitying
I see there are hundreds of texts
to be read out and correlated
and I am happy to help as best I can
clear up this confusion
clarify and analyse the things I said
while drunk I speak to you
without the hope of mercy
you are everything to me
daughters
I kneel on the ground from which
you sprung
my jury of sunflowers
come out where I can see you
through the dense mist of my cataracts
perhaps you bring me news of my daughter
who was married and shipped two moons ago
no perhaps then you have come bearing gifts a case
of the local grape of which in my later years I have become
inordinately fond no I can see from your expression I’m mistaken
ah you have brought the reply from the queen of Spain a resounding yes
hi i should like to have the answers
to shall we say certain questions
and to wake up certain of directions
and a levelness of breathing and
of not being in a neo-noir movie
instead the mildness of the evening
and the possibility of ice-cream
waiting ahead in girlfriend heaven
when i return with gifts one chocolate
one strawberry i’ll think of a question
any question the way you might prop
a stick below a window letting in
night air then pick that stick up from
its slant using it to gesture wisely
while elaborating on whatever
making all the time shall we say finer
distinctions splitting pairs of pairs
together like couples who both see
suddenly that this won’t be for ever
it takes till now for the window to fall
and there can be no bitterness
or anger so what i’m saying is thank
you thank you and see you later
across the moonscapes of skateparks you are 13 yrs old
& no longer allowed to play with boys / on platform 6
wearing your amazing cape you are not in fact you
but someone else / while I’m a guy who mishears lyrics
resulting in a more beautiful but private understanding
with your dark fringe white shirt & straw hat you are
the palest goth at the picnic / resolutely uncharmed
by my very charming friend you are the poster of disinterest