Embedded Files
The spirit
so I am, after all,
accidentally come to Brighton
on the most beautiful
possible day in all October,
with the windfarms far-off
only half in sight
or held in the dim field
of imagination, like a mist.
I know the pleasure
of the stopping train,
just so abstract, trailing
my shoreline of tallied absences:
I know the dreck
of your name. I tooled
a line or two in my thigh.
I held a fistful of tissue.
Desire is a mirror, and
in this, on a good day,
it is like the sea. Bright
hopeful pyramid,
with sky and wistful,
open palms. Are you
happy? There is a person
there who loves you,
beyond the easy painter,
with her ordinary triptych –
the hook of teeth
in living skin; stranded
ruined and beautiful; rosetinted
breast by sun. Then
an emerald bright
as my redundant spirit.
But I promised! I will stretch
and not break. Look up
at the eagles who prevent
small birds from living.
Who cannot keep from
wondering, on their thermals,
if he is up for
what you have in mind
Parting at morning
after Rothenstein
The pain was so bright it woke me
from my empty sleep.
What dull laceration beyond relief,
I thought. What muscle that prints,
what burning period.
I had lied when I said
I really did think the world ran
on chance. Actually I believe
in fate, but wish I didn’t. And this
is why I am devoted to contingency.
You see I cling to it
like a drowning child
clings to a slipping buoy.
Too big to hold;
no arms to hold me back with.
Already I told you: my crop
is full, I am a falcon
out of want with moving.
There starting over a hidden acre,
unordered and unfortuned.
So when at three
there is still time for four,
when I think of the spine,
my foreign country, when you kiss
my back in your sleep
in a state of consciousness
I can’t yet divine, I feel
the perimeter of forever, nearby.
Scared indigo
was I heaven
with an appetite. the ictus
of a shallow iced pond
in want of careful shattering,
under the split sole
of paradise. I could even hear
the colour of the water change.
that barely slips for fault.
moon is a black nothing,
is a white smudge in the still blue
centre of the morning,
is rose-handed, a long fire away
now. and the park fenced
in plastic thought
like a blue haze. my hazel-eyed
breaker: well, we know,
poetry is honesty by other means.
there is something
beyond wisdom, called
truth. I loved myself
as a sample bruised from use.
I loved the dreamfolded
back, how you could hear
my laugh through my shoulder blades,
the tiny body seizing.
and what a miracle, the way
the body aligns itself for sorrow,
like a dart
propelled towards its own ending
in a dark pool,
like women, devastated
objects for their own holding,
anything
Imogen Cassels’ debut collection, Silk Work, was published by Prototype in May 2025. She lives in London.
Copyright © 2025 by Imogen Cassels, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
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