Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Seagull. Poem by Annest Gwilym

 
Inspired by Wallace Stevens’ Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
 
I
The world was born
From the point of light
In a seagull’s pale eye
 
II
Beneath the sign
DON’T FEED THE SEAGULLS
The seagulls feed themselves
 
III
In the sea’s deep crypt
Two oysters and a mussel
Dream of seagulls
 
IV
In the woods of confusion
The way out is marked
By a trail of seagull droppings
 
V
The sun plays Midas on the water
While two seagulls play Mars
Over a limp sandwich
 
VI
A flock of seagulls
And a raven
Is still a flock of seagulls
 
VII
In a castle’s cobbled forecourt
A seagull and a collared dove
Hold court
 
VIII
When skies are violent
A seagull’s muscular wings
Hold up moisture-rich clouds
 
IX
Killers from the egg
Each seagull knows
How to catch a pike
 
X
In a manor’s formal gardens
Where a marble fountain tinkles
A seagull’s cries are informal
 
XI
From a train’s rectangular window
Seagulls chase after a plough
Like a sudden snow blizzard
 
XII
One of Braque’s birds
Dreamt that in another life
He was a seagull
 
XIII
Alone on a beach, a child watches
As a dead seagull’s wing flaps
Quietly in the breeze
 
‘Killers from the egg’ is from Ted Hughes’s poem Pike
 
 

 
 
Author of two books of poetry: Surfacing (2018) and What the Owl Taught Me (2020), both published by Lapwing Poetry. Annest has been published in many literary journals, both online and in print, and in anthologies. She has been placed in several writing competitions, winning one. She lives on the coast of north west Wales with her rescue dog. Twitter: @AnnestGwilym
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

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3 Poems by Frederick Pollack, Self-Starter, Gran Via & Something I Said

Self-Starter
 
(i.)
 
A superhero from a distant
franchise of the Marvel universe
finds himself in a labyrinth.
A few turns, retracings,
very human moments
of indecision confirm that’s what
it is. His great secret motivator,
contempt, rises (not breaking
the mild, righteous surface);
and with a combination
of fire from his eyes
and steely blows he breaks through
wall after ivy-covered wall.
(In a straight line. Diagonal to
the lie of the maze. It’s unclear why
he doesn’t fly. Contempt.)
Shells, fossils, bas-reliefs
dislodged by his violence fall among
the smoking bricks and vines. (The point
of a labyrinth is terror, despair;
why art? The superhero doesn’t stop
to ask. An irritant.)
A last kick and he’s out. Somewhere – he can
resume his universe-saving
from anywhere. But for a moment
he’s tired,
his mood less than triumphant.
This has happened before; he views it
as a tribute paid to everything mortal.
And wonders what his enemy placed
this time at the center
of the maze to consume him.
 
 
(ii.)
 
Gran Via
 
The famous sights must still
grace faded glossy calendars
on walls somewhere.
Another horse and king. Sword pointing
the dead behind him
towards death – there’s no point, otherwise.
It might be instructive
to remove the bronze kings, keep the horses.
 
Decide at any point
that the approaching pretty park
will be pretty, the stuff between
interesting, and turn back.
You will at once destroy
tourism and the basis
(Baudelaire, the flâneur, etc.)
of modern poetry.
 
Wherever you are, forgive the locals.
You remind them that time doesn’t have
a long grey beard but white stubble.
 
 
(iii.)
 
Something I Said
 
It’s worse
than remarks that ended
job interviews, dates, jobs, relationships.
(She sat there crying or enraged,
and since I’m nice I apologized
for months or the duration.)
I turn from whoever it is,
staring and pale, and myself. There are depths
of self and wit I’d rather weren’t.
But a waitress here with hors-d’oeuvres,
though impeccably trained, has dropped them,
the tray aghast in midair.
A general has almost spilled his drink.
A celebrity ages. Noted lobbyists
and cokeheads, always in motion, stop.
Hidden children whisper. From the terrace
a wolfhound enters, steals some human food,
and gazes up with doubtful sympathy.
(In the distance, workers
erecting a tent for the raffle grin,
but they’re from the past, some old novel.)
Across the salon our host and hostess
stand motionless, still gracious.
I should bottle it, I think,
by which I mean keep silent but connote
researching, mastering this skill,
inventing time travel and returning
to stymie history with well-placed words.
 
 

 
 
Author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure (Story Line Press, 1986; to be reissued by Red Hen Press) and Happiness (Story Line Press, 1998), and two collections, A Poverty of Words (Prolific Press, 2015) and Landscape with Mutant (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018). In print, Pollack’s work has appeared in Hudson Review, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Manhattan Review, Skidrow Penthouse, Main Street Rag, Miramar, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Poetry Quarterly Review, Magma (UK), Neon (UK), Orbis (UK), Armarolla, December, and elsewhere. Online, his poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Diagram, BlazeVox, Mudlark, Occupoetry, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, Big Pond Rumours (Canada), Misfit, OffCourse , Poetry Life and Times (2015) and elsewhere.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

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