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Himalayan Balsam
You all wear pastels
for me this season,
so catch me my oh
summer-stung nettle-sting
when when I dance with you
and you’re so caught by me.
You say I holler.
You holler that I trolled you,
but hey, hey, you can’t keep me
in your gardened hours.
Am I am I your porn,
my flowers’ folds, my lace,
folding the nettles that grow
under my cover?
But I need you for my needing
to spread like wildflower.
Come, come on,
click on my seedpods.
Click on my wild times.
Click when you like me.
Nest
Everything is conceived to be contentious: the electric furze;
the fire on the mountain; the smoke that will fledge,
fly and settle in silent reservoirs and have to be purged
from our clear water; the goblet whose twists, whose braids
sit as variation in blackthorn as if spun from the hedge
like a tidal wheel in the sealough’s narrow race.
The vessel in which three eggs rest, the blackbird’s.
We concoct the parting from mine of my neighbour’s acreage
where now we can see what tomorrow gets erased.
The Year of Speaking Japanese
and I’m tell me why do you write the same letter over and over
duolingo yes but there’s something old-fashioned cd-like to me
should be on a scroll vertical horsehair brush dipped in soot-deerhide ink
to your friends’ and dropped schoolwards tarmac undulates trees wait on drumlins
keys hang from ash trees like so much punctuation escaped from our books
our cherryred car scrolling along the satnav two bites at data
you don’t want to talk about school about reading whatever you read
ghost-tractor-footsteps the japanese for pothole you know I’m spoofing
this pine tree has grown from my letter r I dropped here at the roadside
that there japanese for dummies cd not played for what nineteen weeks
CD and car roll on the road roll back the map that rolls out the world
peninsula beats recounted in your say-so the two in eigh-eight
each tree-covered hill an iron age burial each horse a winner
this ash tree has grown from question marks left to hang from our car exhausts
should be on a scroll each country road vertical inkbrushed on the map
because you tell me these are the silent letters they bear repeating
in your voice whispered between unvoiced consonants the vowels I and you
Matt Kirkham’s third collection, Thirty-Seven Theorems of Incompleteness (Templar, 2019), tells the story of the marriage of Kurt and Adele Gödel. This follows The Dumbo Octopus (Templar, 2016), a pamphlet, Aged Fourteen My Grandfather Runs Away To Sea (Templar, 2011), and The Lost Museums (Lagan, 2006). Born in Luton, living in Co. Down, Matt works as a teacher.
Copyright © 2025 by Matt Kirkham, 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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