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Fortnight Publications Ltd.
PoemsAuthor(s): Paul MaddernSource: Fortnight, No. 461 (SEPTEMBER 2008), p. 20Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25704174 .
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from Gimcracks
A Dedication
Spread bleached vellum sheets on snow
and consecrate the spot that made our love distinguished.
A Little Britten
Grimes has thrown his name to the waves
and finds his mind retreats to childhoods
lost in accidental circumstances to the sea.
Puberty
The daughter to the music teacher
sotto voce hums a tune
her mother did not give her.
The Hitch
Freudian Marxists are always hungry. A dilemma: Grace Kelly enters,
complete with a bourgeois dinner.
Hang-ups
Between bottles I'd kill time in galleries
looking for the perfect form in which to drown.
A few Ophelias and I'd be tickled pink,
tipsy with pity and ready for the drink.
Wild Primrose
How do the fragile yellows hold their ground in such desolate stone surrounds?
How well the living flower and the dolmen blend
among the Burren's dead.
Poems Paul Maddern
Leviticus ?for Iris Robinson
I propose we make it law
and set aside this day for sinning. Let's welcome back our bastards and castrati, wear brazen blends of wool and linen
and allow all women who squeeze the balls
of squabbling men to keep their hands.
If you grant me this, in writing, I will shave my hair and clip my nails, even don the leathers. I will be your slave
and let you test me to my limits. But beware:
if I am to be your slave I cannot be for sale.
This much remains my right, despite such sinning.
Kelpdings
At low tide I put the slip into boat-slip and landed my ass on the line
where green algae gives way to brown,
reduced to sea level view I found
exotic kelp frond calligraphies scrawled
over every degree of Harbour Blue:
insular majuscules, Gothic minuscules,
Carolingians, copperplates, bastard hands; the curlicues and cuneiforms of fancy
shaping bywords for baptism and resurrection.
20 FORTNIGHT SEPTEMBER 2008
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