Nathan Hassall
dear sleeper
i thought this was meant to be your night so
why can i see you
curled up on the grass
why can i see them
the ravens the crows the magpies
why can i see them
tip
from your throatmist
each time your ribcage
convexes
you
awaken
all by yourself
has anything changed
orchestral figurette
under prisms
of lamp and cymbal moon
do you sleep to a drum beat
by yourself
gray pencil skirt
stained
with last night’s madras
yourself
among green bins green stars
your
try harder
self
selfbound
why do you keep scratching
roombound
such a way
with dirt
a way
with bodies
sway
with language
i can remember
those old letters
wingless wasps doodled in margins
later tornburied neath
your reefknot tongue
we can chew and can chew but can
never
gulp
the
talon
wedged
in your gullet
give in
unravel index
scrape your
glazed nail
through grass
can you feel
earth
stick
to skin
mud
to memory
it feels like
that last time
when we wore nothing but
teeth
back to
back to
mattress
back
here
had enough
if only these bones were made of rats
I
if a black lake is the death of self, estranged edges
should be touched to assure that any of this is real. a
body of water is just dove feathers rippling in the wind
a body of rats writhe through microscopic holes
holes in the city, holes in the ground, holes in houses,
especially in really old houses, holes in the soil where
bindweeds once struggled for sunlight holes
where
the rats play
the rats play
with reeds around the lake
there are holes in our ears & hearts & noses & holes
where our sight should be
the bath has a plughole so the rats can surface
the bath has a plughole so that i can leave the house
the rats play the rats play with your hair when i try and
touch it rat whiskers sprout from your ratcheeks and
your ratskeleton collapses so you ratfall through
my arms & when i ask is everything
you say the rats are everything
are verything
rat are y ing
t r y ing
y
rats y
II
the rats are hours of shadows that bathe all over
themselves
shadows are strained worlds tailgating other worlds
the rats are death that drown in the stars
those stars that never mourn
the night
the night is rain and the rain
is inside-out
inside-out rain is
organs stapled to skin-rain
rain is you is ratcloud rain
is touch
is drought
is [ ]
is tête-à-tête is god is chance is yet again is has-been-
here-before is grief is water is cacophony is music is
squeaked breath on the skewer of memory
skewer-
rats
the same rats that keep these bones in place
the same bones that keep these rats in place
III
yes
those bones:
bone-graft
bone-soup
bones in flight
respite in bone
a clap to the bone-opus
a spark of bones
commence
the next crisis:
light
billions of years of blasted mass
for a mere eight milliseconds
of swanhymn
rats of war
you tell me that
the rats and i
are line and sentence
as they collide/collude
like a city up to its scrapers
in sea-brine
prose brings a lifeboat
& poetry a trident
neither win
does war
ever have
a winner?
how to let the ratsoldiers in
when they’ve seen everything
that history has ever offered :
love, light, influenza,
typhoid, pop music, trench foot
& for what? all these wars are still fought
in our heads
& in our guts
are rats
as complex
as cells
as glass
as gestures
30% of the time
the strong rat lets
the weak rat
win
30% of the time
the omnipotent rats
let me be
in control
and the rest of the time
i swallow
the world
in front of me
& beg the rats
to trust me again
you tell me
of the great fires
i’ll cause
if i don’t open the windows
& let the rats in
but won’t these flames need oxygen
the same way
curved vowels clipped
in a dialectic birdcage do
you said
just do as the rats ask & let
them do what they need
to do
you need me & them
& you need yourself
the rats are just
patterns
in the external world
to play in this multiverse
of forms is to understand
where the rats are from
why they are music
shaped as
puckered viola strings
& spherical falsettos
i reach out to hug
you but you’re just
another myth of
dimensions :
a ratsmile
cloaked
in wolfskin &
squarepocalypse
Nathan Hassall has an MA (Distinction) in Creative Writing from The University of Kent. He is an editor for The Luxembourg Review and co-founder and editor for Guttural. He has been published or is forthcoming in various magazines including, Projector Magazine, Five:2:One, Watershed Review, cattails, Failed Haiku, Blithe Spirit, Cat on a Leash Review, Angry Old Man Magazine, and Yellow Chair Review. Hassall's most recent chapbook is dregsongs from blab cartilage.