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
- 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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