ON MAGIC & FUTILITY

(NEW POEM)

illness is not a metaphor, and the most truthful way of regarding illness - and the healthiest way of being ill - is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphorical thinking. – susan sontag (1978)

no. magic resides in saliva, distends inside of voice, distilling a blue hill with yr name on it. i spit three times on a bonfire. i spit five times on a tar cross. i spit nine times into a tissue, dropped off in the hospital car park. men are children, trapped inside of watch cottages all night long. my thirst becomes a summons; my spitting is my song. magic resides in a cracked egg, a token of ice pushed under the tongue, the transferred vigour of a cut fern. i climb the fence, i keep yr silence, moving backwards stooping, in the service of this sorcery. love, emulsified and molten with disgust. yr body, deluged and effusioned here. i walk yr dog, sighthound, slight amidst the fireweed. the grass is wet. we soak it up and wring it out, and with it luck. moss is at the centre of this plenty: tender feather, rusty feather, redfoot feather, creeping feather, stairstep feather, foxtail feather, haircap or constricted feather. mantle of feathers, maille of feathers. feathers for protection. to turn the very air. the armour of escape. magic resides. slips in between convenience and ordeal. i bring with me the breath of fields, thin broth of the fields: brochan, bothy-sowans, colwort, curds. i bring with me auxiliary spirits, partitioned bliss, bacon fat. i bring with me a word of power: a single word, stitched into litany on the outskirts of sense. say it with me, into and against the day, its index of fists, waxed needles, aggravating caustics. call it down, it guillotines the broken throat, sheers the very neck. cuckoo me the short, accentuated notes of it, its lithe and coursing effort, its two-step strathspey snap. whisper it, then. press yr tongue into the yielding clay of it. magic abides. my vocation is a romance, stark as terror. i rode here on a fence post. i rode here on the body of a sleeping man. i flew here as the great white improbable gull outside yr window. i will show u to the meadow, to the island, to the scented threshold of memory. all can be reclaimed. all shall be released. i have bound my rye stalks with ribbon. bitter blueberries, crowned like christ.