NEW POETRY BY ANDREW NEILSON AND GEORGE J. FARRAH

ANDREW NEILSON was born in Edinburgh in 1975. His poems have recently appeared in The Dark Horse and he has reviewed for journals including The Poetry Review and Magma. Andrew has also published short stories in Short Fiction 8 and 10. He lives in London.

GEORGE J. FARRAH has been published widely in journals across the U.S. and internationally. He is the author of The Low Pouring Stars, and the chapbook, Insomniac Plum, both from Ravenna Press. He is also an artist  regularly exhibiting his paintings nationally and received an MFA from Bard College NY.   He lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota.


 

Casualties

Ever felt like this? You’ve gatecrashed yourself
     in the manner of Banquo’s ghost,
now shaking thy gory locks at thyself
    even as you open the post,

or brew a coffee or take a meeting
   (in body if not quite in mind),
or any of a million other things
   you do for no reason, resigned

to do it this way because that’s the way
   you have always gone and done it.
Now as Shakespeare says in the Scottish play
   and within his fifteenth sonnet

Life’s but a walking shadow—by shadow
   the Bard here is talking ‘actor’—
that this huge stage presenteth nought but shows:
   fine Shakespearian metaphor

but one too neat (and too stagey) to serve.
   My friends, let’s shake our bloodied maws
and advance this queasy alternative:
   we are casualties, risen raw

and we shall totter, rotten, to the feast,
   standing gawping at our own selves
and feeling it—the fear, the mounting beast,
   the panic no curtain can solve.

 

Triolet

Suited, alone, the man is crying.
Seeing him, a wee girl stops and smiles.
She can’t know why the man is crying,
suited, alone. The man is crying
because he thinks of a friend’s dying
and friends scattered by more than miles.
Suited, alone, the man is crying,
seeing him. A wee girl stops and smiles.

                                                           Andrew Neilson

 

Preferring Others

In the    theater of desire

and the arrival of another

makes us look on the parameter

       which is anywhere

 that becomes a needle

as a cell of a crow

   or a lion

       so (to speak

(I speak to you
           as I rest
      I remember a time where

  it might seem
           difficult

          sudden
                  exact
          that someone
                      cares about you here

                     (furious pursuit
                         of a self dressed
                             concealed
                             & not
                               at the edge of mountain
                                                           perspective

                      a liking a lighting a hiking

                      a clear stretch of someone speaking

this is a hunger

   (a satisfaction
      for any amount)

           preferring others
not to notice
                  not caring

                  hoping they will

                          escaping
                              is
                         such temporary
                               sadness       (he tells me)

                 if alone one hand out hadn’t
                        continued
                             pursuing

                            the ridge
                                high above

                       ( to be all windows

                             and hate it)

       he says, you or I have become

                 so unbearably stretched

                             by our habits.

 

Remittance 


I am amid the snow moving steel and prices

who’s and should i be and who was I?

crags of talk with our over it laugh and you slip asleep

 

  1.   absence contrivance fullbendbowedkissing

                  2. at
moored
111111   (1,0)

   hover lover.
          I am with shirts like autumn room

                             my fingers are

                                      drying
                                      like
                                      apricots

where would find me leaving and having left for so long
would I be a sweet thought an old boot root a lawn gone crazy

would you let me be in you at rest in you
would you move slowly and happily through the room?

would you let me tell you how you made me do that.
                                                                                 

                                                                                         George J. Farrah

 


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The Glasgow Review of Books (ISSN 2053-0560) is an online journal which publishes critical reviews, essays and interviews as well as writing on translation. We accept work in any of the languages of Scotland – English, Gàidhlig and Scots.

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