Simon Jenner

M Courtney Soper

He threatened sense with

his wet origami. It crumbled to a rope

of tattery verb-ends, frail precious papyri

and, from across a damp culture, a wyrd

of word hoards. No devout SAE ladened

his one-way song, addressed to

another feudal editor.

His sweep of us all promised

a heavy trapeze artist who doesn’t

care to be bounced back, but

kept forever suspended by a poem’s

hairline in a Damocles of undelivered

rejections, blithe of his words, struck

down and crumpled; kernelled by

a fist to the basket.

But I remember his disjunct name,

his emptying gesture, clearer than

most of my acceptances.

Does absence make his heart go?

His singularity’s a black hole

on ‘no’, where he’ll not

come down, not let me back

to haunt myself, where he found me,

but in a banquet of his choosing.

He’d find me at home to

his chop-fallen language.

Simon Jenner © 2007/8