Armoured eyes roll back into limbless torsos, layered mouths
hang open furred with fine scillae, legs stiffen together cupped
like porcelain hands ‒ desiccated crabs lie heaped where the sea
meets the saltmarsh. Small as a fingernail, big as a fist, heads
picked off like bottle tops, fallen warriors smashed open like the
windows of abandoned homes. Above the tideline a fish-shaped
patch of stunted grass, scales of a long-decomposed tuna like a
pile of coins, sequins you might sew to a bodice, needles of
guillemot mandible and breastbone scooped out to carry
wingmuscle. And hanging at the surface of a brackish pool, three
legs and a powerful claw dyed green by algae, strung together by
threads of white flesh. All this, lifted and thrown down by the
tide as if the sea were panning for gold. And I did not wish for
your death. But walking among your elements, sifted by weight
across the shingle and silt, I begin to see all that you were. Is
there anything, in the end, that will not be taken and weighed
by the sea?
William Wyld was highly commended in the Forward Prize for best poem and performed at Guilfest, Wilderness Festival, The Barbican Centre and the Queen Elizabeth Hall alongside the London Philharmonic Orchestra and their poetry has appeared in Basket, Propel, Lighthouse, Queer Life Queer Love II and elsewhere.
hang open furred with fine scillae, legs stiffen together cupped
like porcelain hands ‒ desiccated crabs lie heaped where the sea
meets the saltmarsh. Small as a fingernail, big as a fist, heads
picked off like bottle tops, fallen warriors smashed open like the
windows of abandoned homes. Above the tideline a fish-shaped
patch of stunted grass, scales of a long-decomposed tuna like a
pile of coins, sequins you might sew to a bodice, needles of
guillemot mandible and breastbone scooped out to carry
wingmuscle. And hanging at the surface of a brackish pool, three
legs and a powerful claw dyed green by algae, strung together by
threads of white flesh. All this, lifted and thrown down by the
tide as if the sea were panning for gold. And I did not wish for
your death. But walking among your elements, sifted by weight
across the shingle and silt, I begin to see all that you were. Is
there anything, in the end, that will not be taken and weighed
by the sea?
William Wyld was highly commended in the Forward Prize for best poem and performed at Guilfest, Wilderness Festival, The Barbican Centre and the Queen Elizabeth Hall alongside the London Philharmonic Orchestra and their poetry has appeared in Basket, Propel, Lighthouse, Queer Life Queer Love II and elsewhere.
