NEW POETRY BY MARY CATHERINE KINNIBURGH AND DAVID LINKLATER
MARY CATHERINE KINNIBURGH is a doctoral student at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, where she studies spatiality in medieval literature and modern poetics, as well as digital methodologies for literary study. She has received fellowships at Columbia Libraries and Rare Book School, and works alongside the Lost & Found: CUNY Poetics Initiative publishing series for archival materials. When she is buried deep in the library, she writes poems, too, and also organizes a regular poetry workshop in New York City with friends and tequila. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Underwater New York, Hobart, and Blunderbuss. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and four rescue cats. Be in touch at @mckinniburgh.
DAVID ROSS LINKLATER was born in the Highlands of Scotland and now lives in Glasgow. Last year he attained an HNC in Professional Writing at City of Glasgow and is now studying Journalism. He has had poetry published inThe High Flight, ODOU and The Grind. In 2014 he also self-published a collection of poetry titled Ribbons & Rust: Poetry from a Room. You can follow him on Twitter @DavidRossLinkla.
Hunting
I inspect a sheet
of tin, with punched-in
holes: our correspondence.
The asterisk: a shard.
A shape, unprepared –
Long shadowed words
announce entrances of
broken teeth,
decayed pulp hidden
in churning roots.
I’m practicing
memory: a collection
of letters torn up
and reassembled.
You remain
undecipherable:
a hound baying
at the scent of spirits.
Lowlands
I watch saints coalesce in mildew,
slinking through ruined churches
made of coal-colored birds
on abandoned stained-glass islands.
We burn your tallow. The haunted
vestigial arm of the sea: a hole to sleep in,
sluice of flowing waste where teeming
sores map unknown abbeys
on your body. Sepulchered in greening walls,
dark glass carved into our hands: we wait
to see the underground staircase
where you will follow me,
eyes aching for light.
Mary Catherine Kinniburgh
Found These Synchronicities
Big mass hull big white resting tonnage big slow
baby of the sea — empty belly HM Hamnavoe
& she spreads butter on the water behind with
orange brow & she is loud — horn blowing
in the morning — so loud the girls running round the table
in my dream seem to anticipate her with trumpets.
Maeshowe Standing Stones of Stenness Ring of Brodgar
& pilgrims wander bare foot & kiss the rock & hug & pray
there’s something going on — a strange
scene or not so strange at all — simple in another language
where tombs are all silent with tags 1841 1902 & we wuz ‘ere 2014
& the pilgrims circle with kisses until they’re in their socks again.
Blue thin sheet fresh uncreased blue pulled
over smooth blue veined bodies in a warm tangle
of shifting shapes — wonderful shapes — archaic shapes
with lips like a roof to keep the fire in
the ripening love of two bodies
ablaze — come — synced.
David Linklater
If you wish to read the poems in page view, the following link will take you to a PDF – M. C. Kinniburgh and D. Linklater poems
All works published by the Glasgow Review of Books are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License and the journal reserves the right to be named as place of first publication in any citation. Copyright remains with the poet. http://www.glasgowreviewofbooks.com