sans it is all ceremony it is all the cloths all gathered-in it is white tailor’s chalk in a neat triangle it is the blanket-stitch before the machine it is the neighbour woman with her bone-pick pulling stitches one by one from the curtain lining the [bone-pick] is ivory coloured a little larger than a [tooth-pick] nubbed to cradle under the silks and lift them up so she can snip it at the ties the little knot hidden in back of the material stretched out across her knees is silver the thread is doubled-to her material is some floral-stuff on white laid onto a cream skirting she will rinse it out in cold water later and hang it on the monday line the blue-blue rope of the monday line the length of material is clean / sweaty from her handiwork she will hang it over the gauze of her nets which are always immaculate her effort is blind she does not need eyes to feel her work her gathering-to of the pleats Copyright 2013 Chris Murray Published Southword Online URL http://www.munsterlit.ie/Southword/Issues/25/murray_christine.html Collected The Blind, Oneiros Books, 2013
Tag: oneiros books
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Sequence in Green (i) breaths Like in lights/breaths the woodwind song meets the trees. A green growth/ a rush of roots/ birds. Summer-swell/the flowered edges of day breaking. (ii) buds Hills of green shadow and butter-gorse. The dead made of dry stalks with all their buds inside them. (iii) bones Green lifts and stitches-in Perfumes/ summering Silver-back gull, wind-scuffed, sun-buried/ ghost-bird with a still-feathered skull, each puffed-out wing fragrant with oxygen/ each jade-eye a salty stone peering keen to the wound of the shore sown with olive pods polished as knuckle bones. (iv) blood Emerald, in your daybed of flowers trapping all the shucked-light of the sun as sugar/as oxygen/ as diamonds/ as blood.
Ideogram for Red after Alice Oswald In a shadow, an invisible red where the first flower sounds. Narrow, and red-through in all directions. Underfoot - roots. Blood. A claw of wood. Red becomes a red-rush/ the flash of a robin’s breast in a splay of autumn blades. Red rising with the sun/ without bearings vanishing in the outbloom of light. Struggling, like each colour to be seen red bursts with the fury of a firework folds herself into herself fails for a season.Sequence in Green is © Gillian Prew
from The Black Stanzas
(i) a yoke of blood/my iris-eye
Too narrow and grief/stressed by what the toil has tied me to/
a yoke of blood and the weeping flies. All-droop
the black leaking/the drip of wet dust being born. Sun,
the magic sleeper roofed-out and black. Black again
men’s hearts/winter hearts/bags of breathless black.
First spring snowdrop from my iris-eye blooming here
on the concrete/its white-scented sisters a wood away.
(ii) a road of blood/a dome of cold
Like snow on the moon the cold tucked-in all glass
and weeping winter motes/a road of blood/ of red-
pepper tones tucked-up in a dome of cold. Blue,
the silent summer throats hooked and stuck. Hauled/
black salts/the wounds of weak indifference gold.
(iii) the crush of life/the food I am
A scrape/a stun/a sticking knife. The crush of life/
the food I am. Up-bent and ruined red. Red into
the sticking black. Shut-down and meat/no epitaph.
(iv) a black hole/a blue planet
Is to slow darken/is to stagger, spin.
Myself nothing/a truckload of me nothing/
a black hole of us fading. A pinhole of sky
a blue planet/an eye.
(v) an echo of light/a crimson splatter
In a place of grief – light an echo of light –
black rhythms pulse a half-death in
the glass hours of overwintering. Spring
buds a crimson splatter/blooms out
pollen-spiced/world breathing green
beyond the slaughterhouses.
(vi) their bud-fists/their black-stamens
Each bold bone rooting/forming their green spines
their bud-fists, their hidden light. Stacked-up wounds
blooming red upon red/ a season of blood-letting.
Flowers/risen-out/watercolour wounds in the spring rains.
The clavicle-curves of the tulip basins softer than bone/
their black-stamens fastened in like nails.
First published at Bone Orchard Poetry
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teserrae of names
dull mustard
fiery gold flames
organics of mushroom tea
gaudy/ Gaudi/ lace/ paste
St Audrey/ rust/ blood/ lace
yes, tawdry lace
-I can use that
round and round
the mulberry bush
oranges/ bees/ fish/
old chain letter/ old
poems stuck together/
spermed-together/
cum-came/ come on!
books published
unaltering of anything/
but the subtle flavouring of fish – maybe
dom/dominatrix/domestic goddess/
GOD !
this girl’s great in the kitsch-en
cook-stuff/ cock-stuff //really // cock-stuff/
who knows
what goes
on where the
rosey-poesie
poetry muses lie ?
butterfly-netted the
bee-priestess/poetess
black veiled butterfly-swoop
unguarded ungirded/
girdled //corsetted//cosseted
our bee-keepers are impotent
poetess/priestess jiggle your
tits /make soup/
and I thought /
I need more meat than this to feed my brain,
words of madness /of bloodletting/
vein of salts/salts in the blood-wounds/
of those who … (know)
lady take my hand/
let us go to the bare
birthing room/ the death-room/
the room of whispers/screams/
some agony of death is here/
clean kitchens /jeyes fluid/
orange savlon/salted wounds/
//cif //blood//
eggs//
ANYTHING …
but spare me the details for the subtle flavouring of fish – please
© Christine Murray & first published in Colony Journal.Image by Max Ernst -
I #
.…silence yes/ silenced yes/ as if to ever
having done with it/ stripped solace no/
vital lapse in all depth of becoming-un/ as if
because it were unto/ ash unto/
no/ pure as never was/ ever was/ given to
yet it cannot/ asks of dust what climb or
other than /
dry reach in catascopic/ hence shadow never
vital/
all traces then forgotten/ yet given to un-
forgot/ blind edge laughter/ afar/ no/#
clamours afar/ yet nothing to it/ in banquet
of nothing no not a/hence shadow’s dissolve in bit night balm/
well-spoken silenced/of ghost-limbed rapture no/ call cards as if
to/ dissolve yet surface of what to it/spit in eye of eye of it/ no/ traipse till yet
un-afar a-light unlit light of silhouette dark
what dark/yet for as if to/ not a sense of all’s retrace/ of
fading nullity/ ever only of it/ spliced no
not ever…#
…further echo further no/ as if to say that
no/ non further yes/ silenced in stripped
silence of/rapture suffocate in which a-dream/ not a/
vibrates yes yet lack of sounding all colours
clear/waste upon waste/ useless forage/ nothing
that ever was/ ever was or if/what will in-speak derivative of what or
else/ blood can only ever be/ what can be/unspoken detritus desire demarcate/ dim
light of eyes all dredged/#
speaks yes or no no answer collapse of/
fallen flourish/ being in/ silence in/ yet not
a trace there is yet / silenced/ two three
what can be/opens up in head of time spent forgotten/
fade of five steps/ back or forth no matter if/dries eyes with waxen what bodily volatile/
reduction of all/ bind bite what what/time rotting within skull of gild/ meat
locked to/ breath silencing allwhile…II # …in breathless of/ all suffocate’s desire in
realm/ forgotten closure fissure fissure ice
until/drag of tilt till shear of open spasm/ flail
naught un-sky/ dressage vortice no/yet given of until/ reduct blind forage
empty emptily/ walls seep solace rupture
eye/eclipt drags out all what once was once or
ever other than in if/ ashen dislocate/resurgence/ resurgence no/ head drowns in
bloody latrine clear glass/#
ruptures rails in absent sense derail/ cracks
blind all shadow deft until/ light snap
stone/dirt in trace reduct/ fallen/ haven yes or no/
price of elective/price of unsung what reach of purpose
strips death cloud from eye/ frozen breath
collapse/juggernauts too/ two or four/ fore/ of a/ not
a/ resurgence nothing cracks here or ever
unto/ dead head disarm/ rolls dice around
on lacerate of tongue/ spits lest dawn…#
…expels from out of which/ desire silence
breathless overtures/oceanic collapse/ drags din wind collision
of/ sun forgotten/ worthless/in click-clack steel bone drag hilt no/ rots
clap hands/ drained ever/ever on yet what from purchase present
nothing was whatever was/cold walls in which to/ collapse un-dread re-
dread/ head in vice of cold colours/
trick of light/#
blood from out of forage ever-no/ steers eye
unto further no further distance/screams out from it/ visage no/ warped
bones ever all/ all lies all present and
correct/bitten white light silence breakage point
was once spoken or was not/ bites again/
rain rain in obsolete pulse bulb/there is spit/ there is shadowing untold/
light’s corrode/ dead laughter realm/
bruised/ tacit/ stammers once more as if it/
silence silence/ rotting colours abound…III # …in-dreamt capacity/ trades meat for
absent shores/ given less/ shadowed no/nothing dreamt of furtherance become yet it
cannot/ furtherance of which in else of other
lessened/meat trade in opulent unsound it trace
nothing/ unsound retrace un-meat of fallen
ash/of prism pillage traces/ yet drains of/ there
or other/collapsed purpose unfelt in an un-sky of
shatter-glass abattoir/.
#
distances that never were unforgotten/ in
stench reek to abound one step shit flow in
veins/it is cold it is not/ collected from/ wayward
sentence as flies gather in/ if said what once
was never once/opulence/ circling skulled veins what
matter (the) vultured teeth of it/ scar tissue
un-livid/naught a closed wound apathetic/ apathetic
stretches boundary tint/collapse still yet nothing pressed to the
bone’s collision/ unspoken of…#
…echo erased that never heard was not of a/
design utter violet sheer/ cold cast a bitter
a/
longing stretched/ meat solace of which of
eye in-dream/ else collision solace final/
redeem non-touch meat cold as ever was
before lapse eye a sleight of hand/
nothing to follow yet cannot/
etches from out of nothing furtherance
undone resolve forgotten/ rotted meat a
blister here/
#
solace fracture/ another’s density/tomes
cast dead no sentence in only of ever-like
fettered resound/
yet cannot sense/ un-sensed/ a locket/ in-
breath of sarcophagus eye given to fall/
long foreign hours never to be proven/ yet
what what longing/ else of none/
till dense approximate/ crumbling
measurements/ trace cold dead teeth a sneer
at the unutterable/
pressure point of long non-stir/ into utter/
cold meat as ever was before/
before having…
from breath(en) flux & © Michael McAloran
Michael Mc Aloran is Belfast born. He is the author of a number of collections of poetry, prose poetry, poetic aphorisms and prose, most notably Attributes (Desperanto, NY, 2011), The Non Herein & Of Dead Silences (Lapwing Publications, 2011/ 2013) Of the Nothing Of, The Zero Eye, The Bled Sun, In Damage Seasons (Oneiros Books (U.K)–2013/ 14); Code #4 Texts a collaboration with the Dutch poet, Aad de Gids, was also published in 2014 by Oneiros. He was also the editor/ creator of Bone Orchard Poetry, & edited for Oneiros Books (U.K 2013/ 2014). A further collection, Un-Sight/ Un-Sound (delirium X.) was published by gnOme books (U.S), and In Arena Night is forthcoming from Lapwing Publications. EchoNone & Of Dissipating Traces were also recently released by Oneiros Books. breath(en) flux, a chapbook, was recently released by Hesterglock Press. -
L’Heure Bleu
a dwell in the night a, sigh. a dervish dislodged a textile, sigh
it is the night it is a night on earth the hedges prematurely in
bloom with almost lightning, flowers so, white and optic so,opioid
a scent as some people sit on a bench and conspicuous leaves on
the forestrial floor. oak moss and waterlily release pungent smells
as pungent as sexual. it is the blue hour between love and war,
dark mosses vessels almost for some astral war, the trail of laurel
and pittosporum the navigational mappology by which we float as in,
an unseen jar a headspace placed on the venezolan roraima to catch
this petite star orchids’ unbelievable strong pineapplescent. as
the classic perfumes however stay true to a private royaume along
forgotten paths in venezuela, brazil, malaysia and italy, guerlain’s
famous perfume l’heure bleue stays true to its 1912 formula…..L’Heure Bleue is © Aad de Gids
.
*L’Heure Bleue or ‘the bluish hour’ was created by Jacques Guerlain in 1912. The fragrance is velvety soft and romantic, it is a fragrance of bluish dusk and anticipation of night, before the first stars appear in the sky. The top notes are opening with spicy-sweet aniseed and fresh bergamot that gently lead to the heart of rose, carnation, tuberose, violet, and neroli. The soft and powdery floral notes are resting on a base of vanilla, Tonka bean, iris and benzoin. The perfume is mysterious, elegant and timeless. It was created by Raymond Guerlain. The bottle is shaped like the one of Mitsouko and the stopper is shaped like a hollow heart that alludes to romantic pre-war years. [fragrantica]Famine Ship at Murrisk Abbey *
‘L’heure bleue’ for Aad de Gids
That almost night
at Murrisk Abbey.
Darkness begins to drop
its black capillaries, its ink blots.
Rorschach animals ink sky’s ultramarine
seeping their blue tones into the sea.
The reek looms above Murrisk Abbey.
Altared, a blown bouquet
tissues its stem toward
the famine ship,
bone-souldered
its graven skeletons
knit ‘ship’
it baulks the dark,
blacker than the fallen sky,
the fairylight houses.
Blacker still than stone.
by C. Murray
* The National Famine Memorial by John Behan RHA at Murrisk, Co Mayo
Aad de Gids is from Schiedam, Netherlands. He works as a psychiatric nurse. trance the ibisworld by Aad de Gids is available on Poethead. He has co-authored Machinations (KFS Press) an ekphrastic collaboration with Michael McAloran soon to be reissued via Oneiros Books , and a text collaboration Code #4 Texts (Oneiros Books, 2014). His chapbook acryl lacquer lost in the forest was published by Bone Orchard Press in 2014.Books by Aad de Gids
acryl lacquer lost in the forest
Code #4 Texts 
Machinations -
Sequences — (After Francis Bacon)
2…meat unto collapse/ stead lapse/ the lung’s abort in headless barrage the head is/ traces the/ meat’s sarcophagus is the light surrounding/ the forms that bind the subject-object/being in this from onset’s claim/ the stripping down of/ in gradual of irreversible/ meat does not climb it cannot/ it/ blind limit of/ in/ in conflict there its sense fed to the/ nausea all in the face of/ the sunken eye divulged of meat/ the meat that is the figure’s construct/ gallowing from bone/ opulent the sickness-pity for/from unsung/ carved out of/movement through nothing the flesh/ clamouring/ cascading yet inward and then yet none/ the laughter of the meat is silent/ the its’ cajole/ meat’s blood spills out of vacuum presence/ meat is not void the head is void in conflict there the meat devoid of/ un-sound…
3…the piss/ cum/ shit of celebratory nothing/ the ruptured meat weeps from the skin’s bind/ bound upon as if it/ or/ in that/ celebratory excavations before the foot of none/ meat’s saving graces in ejaculative/ voidal/ or the introspect of needle/ cunt penetrate/ rectal/ the mutilation of/ meat is the worst possible beginning-ending/ it/ other than/ the head lopped off sings to the solar anus of the eye’s mind percept/ though of or or/ not from the give or the taking from of flesh/ is it/ the head is bone the body boned yet/ unto the sky there is no end it perceives the flesh null and void/ yet in the meat of the percept/ even the fault of which applies/ the whole is not correct merely because it is of the exist/ it does not burn unless it is set to/ light…
4…object of/ scar tissue silences/ yet/ meat stings of the echo-wound/ the bound devour of in/ meat has forgotten/ the head as object desires the other it/ all stripped/ sung from the broken amulets of memory’s shades of silent wasteland/ yet the meat/ still scarred/ collapses under the weight of/ consumption/ because it be/ it can yet be other/ it cannot be other than without choice/ the meat sings blood and sense yet it does not sing of final/ meat is arbitrary/ it sings in pleasure yet it does not sing aloft/ but in the expulsion of desire/ in which none is known/ terms wishes granted it/ dragging out the carcass of it into the light flaying the spectral knowledge/ the meat suffers/ it is a rabid dog in the midst of silence/ seeking to be annihilate/ yet…
5…fleshed on in-step/ bled from/ what is it/ this/ in this is felt yet no/ not of/ in animus of collective taste/ the bleed of asking yet/ bound to/ the face’s demolition/ the smearing of/ hence it lacking identic/ special all as if reverberating sound in cylindrical/ yet meat’s taste is of the flesh it/ sombre ash in the guts/ in the defecate of that already final/ as for the mock bind of sex the interchange and shift of parameter/ meat still yet entwined in the tint of desire’s persistent edge/ all spun together between the animal and the/ obscenely bound to the nothing that is/ if/ where from yet in grip of marrow beneath the flesh’s desertion in/ else never truly penetrating/ the cock lacking the hyenic bone will/ legs splayed/ a cunt exposed/ a rectum/ skinned the purpose of in the thrust of meat and the beckoning void/ of it…
6…the escape from flesh/ momentarily through flesh the loss of being in/ subtle cataract of none/ escapade of/ the blood coming to the eyes the cum coming to the fore/ blind-sighted/ then/ yes or no/ base flesh and the blood-red passage through night/ in machinate of/over again as if to/ yet never the escape from/ not conscious deliverance nor conscious bite/ having bitten the wick between anguish and desire/ chased by the none of exigency and lack/ of final edge and of/ red raw yet no/ of the blood no unless asked of/ the flayed will reduced to ashen/ scar a long the indent of emblem bitten dredge/ the frenzy of/…/all the while the meat slowly erased/ in definite stead/ the sense of final and over and again/ until/ bled out from circus tint of blood/ bone lack…
Sequences — (After Francis Bacon) is © Michael McAloran
Image is © Michael McAloranMichael Mc Aloran was Belfast born, (1976). His work has appeared in various zines and magazines, including ditch, Gobbet Magazine, Ygdrasil, Establishment, Unlikely Stories, Stride Magazine, Underground Books, InterPoetry, etc. He has authored a number of chapbooks, including The Gathered Bones, (Calliope Nerve Media), Final Fragments, (Calliope Nerve Media) & Unto Naught, (Erbacce-Press). A full length collection of poems, Attributes, was published by Desperanto in 2011. Lapwing Publications, (Ireland), released a collection of his poems, The Non Herein in 2012. The Knives, Forks & Spoons Press, (U.K), also released an ekphrastic book of text/ art, Machinations & Oneiros Books released In Damage Seasons and All Stepped/ Undone in 2013. A further collection Of Dead Silences, was published by Lapwing Publications. His most recent publications are The Zero Eye and Of the Nothing Of (Oneiros Books). He is the editor/ creator of Bone Orchard Zine and he edits for Oneiros Books. -
A Wound’s Sound
by Gillian Prew
62 pages
Published by Oneiros Books in 2014Cover Art by Matt Sesow
This poem
This poem has blood in its ears/
it is being hauled up by a hook/
it is losing consciousness
This Poem is by Gillian Prew
Gillian Prew’s recent publication A Wound’s Sound (Oneiros Books, 2014) is described thus,
The ambient howl-sound pervades everything. The gutted beasts are everywhere – billions raised and slaughtered for food globally each year. A Wound’s Sound is an attempt to distill and voice their pain and their silence.
The above being true, the book in itself is an elegiac affirmation of the beauty and terror of nature from a perspective offering itself as the animal voice of worship and of pain. That the animal is slaughtered at the hand of man guides Prew’s expression and advises the thematic flow of A Wound’s Sound. Within and beyond her desire to expose inhumane cruelty Prew’s subtle expressiveness cannot but affirm her own life and presence as a poet,
Sun Trap
World, damned hieroglyph,
your skin is not mine nor
do your fuchsias bend like bells for me.
it is hot today. I meet the sun alone-
more intimate than being born.
Too hot for human reason, yet
ants bear colossi round my feet.Sun Trap is © Gillian Prew
Here, then is the tension at the heart of A Wound’s Sound: Man’s inhumanity to animals is expressed and projected through the poetic voice of a woman poet. The issue of projection and awareness of the pain of the other, in this case the pain of the animal raised for slaughter, is difficult to achieve as one can never be sure that the subjective is not impinging upon the creative process. The poet must then put herself into the centre of the book, as the voice of the wounded animal and as revelator of inhumane cruelty. Achieving this balance is probably a very difficult thing to do as it necessitates centering oneself at the heart of the action, both identifying with human cruelty at a personal level, while at once rejecting it within the self and elegiasing small loss.
One needs to be a poet of skill, organisation and experience to approach the themes that I have set out above here to retain enough neutrality to allow the poem to develop its expression so that the reader is not swamped in the subjective viewpoint of the poet. Prew succeeds in achieving an elegiac tone to the whole book without subverting the reader’s interest by producing short imagistic pieces alongside slightly longer and more thematically developed poems,
from Elegy
Nothing sounds but sky/nothing
to touch but folds of wind
and the rain doubled from sadness
tumbling itself down.Deep/
deep
the loss it bends/
it seesthe trees
sucking up and spitting out
stripping the water to a drop/a wet whisper/ a hole.
From Elegy by Gillian Prew
As here are wounded animals that have found themselves in the wrong place and time. Thus, an element of chance plays into Prew’s narrative,
No God
I was born into the wrong fields. They stuttered
with ever-goldening, the black pulse of growth,
and I played right into their forest skirts
full of bluebells and night time. my house was
smoke and separation.from No God by Gillian Prew
A Wound’s Sound is in the main a book of short and micro-poems, some of which are gathered into groupings like “restlessly, driven by leaves ” (after Rilke) and Fragments from Noticing. These micro-poems are intense natural distillations imbued with unique colour and pared to the bone of the image,
The soaring cold barks at windows like a kept-out dog
whines through the small spaces/slows the old.Jackdaws and magpies land on the treetops.
The branches flap/they wave.
An old man looks up in his flat cap/
his mouth a shut wound.from” restlessly, driven by leaves”
Gillian Prew is a poetic craftswoman, her tight imagery and structuring allow her to encapsulate her symbols in perfect neat aphorisms that concentrate the reader’s mind wholly on the idea that she wishes to create. Prew’s colouring is limpidly gray, often suddenly dashed with colour like the rowanberry stain as blood symbolic.
Prew’s colour use is evocative and symbolic throughout A Wound’s Sound. The gimlet eye of the soaring bird suddenly dashes and alters the reader’s perspective. This use of device and altered perspective make her landscape planes appear wavering and fragile in many places. She handles her craft with great acuity and professionalism, and whilst the major themes of A Wound’s Sound could be maudlin, an assuredness of personal style allows the poet enough canvas to turn the universal themes of slaughter and death into the sweetly elegiac – a song of affirmation, or witness.
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“restlessly, driven by leaves.” after a line by Rilke Leaf-sound/sea-sound/bird-sound/ shoved places of air – pockets of autumn/natural languages. * The scuffed water/the swinging fruits/the ruffled gulls - wind with its throat open. * The soaring cold barks at windows like a kept-out dog whines through the small spaces/slows the old. * And in cold’s quiet undertow blood is not quite wide enough/blood clotted on pavements rowanberry red. * My ear to the stone hard/hard a murmur is coming/ a tremble of locked-up hooves. * Jackdaws and magpies land on the treetops. The branches flap/they wave. An old man looks up in his flat cap/ his mouth a shut wound. * Kolya, ghost-white traipsing the ochre-cluttered gardens and Milo, a shadow/ his guts thrust up to his chest. * Autumn/ the days loop-gusts tight to the bone loose to the sky/the lifted holes.“restlessly, driven by leaves” from A Wound’s Sound by Gillian Prew. Published Oneiros Books, 2014
A WOUND’S SOUND
Gillian Prew
The ambient howl-sound pervades everything. The gutted beasts are everywhere – billions raised and slaughtered for food globally each year. ‘A Wound’s Sound’ is an attempt to distill and voice their pain and their silence.Oneiros Books Poetry Catalogue
.
-
may bell
not a rook to maycaw its mockery
seats are pulled up to the maybell statuary
starling swipes up at a yellow tree
laburnum is poison it sings
yellow fish are stitched into a tree
tacked into the leaf and flower
the flowerpod
the seed –
maybe all three:
root, bloom, and seed
are stitched in.
seed
seed slopes,
slews in
the crystal pool
its flesh blooms to an effort at tone
former desiccate, it corals the milk
sucking in meat
from water’s distress
and living nonetheless–
winding in its silver thread
beneath brine of flesh frond
and secret too
cells
draw in the silver thread beneath brine of flesh frond
shut in cold
shut in light
a silica scar
a stone embed
lit in rock
deep cut in
it forms a bird
graven arched
this place is unseamed
cells
draw to the frayed lifethread the flame of it is subdued to a sense of lit
drawn-in too the seed sunk drowned in its slew of coral fibrous brine
threads separate underneath a shower of humus that in-bole-gathers
hammer and lead the gardener is raking rounds exposing the roots of
trees groved
trees grieved
sweetheart blossoms lie on wet ground bereft of their generations
there is only the marble of the statuary now fleshing its wounds so
seed will lie
seed will lie
may bell and cells form part of a dream sequence from The Blind (Oneiros Books, 2013). These sequences are © C. Murray.The book can be ordered online from Oneiros Books.
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of the nothing of.
Paperback: 182 Pages
Oneiros Books 2014
Cover is © Tadhg Murray
…I genuflect to nothing, in a vacancy of shit..
(from of the none exposed)
Michael McAloran’s of the nothing of is subtly related to another of his works with Oneiros Books All Stepped/Undone. While both collections have a loosely tripartite structure, in of the nothing of McAloran is pushing into the realm of the psyche, and attempting its full expression.
In essence of the nothing of moves from a griefscape like in All Stepped/Undone toward expressing the disembodied voice. It is a work largely sited in the telling of the physical memory. McAloran’s control and direction is achieved through the work under three major headings, of which more anon. of the nothing of has a dystopian expressiveness of some magnitude which he achieves and maintains through voice.
Voice is spoken through pulse-beat, through an imagined interior such as a corridor or a room with a naked bulb, indeed through the voice unaccommodated. Here, a Beckettian mouth through which an ancient howl emerges. Whitman’s Howl meets Not I, but without the celebratory tone. This is not to say that there is no humour here, there is, it is self-deprecating.
of the nothing of is divided into of subtle butchery, of the none exposed, and pulse beats. The larger part of the book is contained in of subtle butchery which is divided into poetry alternating with prose segments. of the none exposed is poetic prose all through, here and there glints of humour are evident. pulse beats are precisely that, short bursts of poetry in four sections merging with and into prose segments. pulse beats structuring is poetry/prose/poetry/prose. it is the shortest section of the book, with the final prose section contained in one and a half pages.Although the narrative voice, or anti-voice in of the nothing of lacks physicality, lacks a geography, it is clearly (or was) an embodied voice. Voice’s physical experience is one of violence,
…[pulse beat]…
…(oh, how I remember it all, as if, as if in the going on or the getting on were of the nobility of eyes/ stillness-cadaverine/stone mockery/ashes drifting away from an open palm…)…
…[pulse beat]…from pulse beats
…All said of the what of it, spoken again, as if to spite, till the
dread of which, no not once, vapours of stagnant bleeding, skull
in a vice of empty desolate , winds throughout hollow, as of dead,
yet else, breathing all the while of circus pageantry, where the
hands fall stripped of flesh, having gathered the briars of nothing
else…..I’ll yet stay, I’ll yet go…
…The hours are very long…
#15 of the none exposed
of the nothing of is not a unified work. There are three divisions within the book. These divisions are arbitrary. I do not think the book should be perceived or understood as a unity. McAloran delights in the non-narrative, and in creating cognitive dissonance. Thus the reader can pick or choose which part of the work suits them to read, without the problem of finding progression/theme/unity /or purpose. Reading the book is somehow equivalent to peering into an anthill of busy piracy and casual marauding, it slips between the fingers and rejects the readers attempt to garner a safe place to pause, to rest,
the flash of a match head/dreaming all the while of the living
and the dead and of the what might be to become of this nothing
that is/ (stunted/ ever-glowing) /ask of the asp the pathway
through tall grasses/from of subtle butchery
What underpins and creates a sense of unity in of the nothing of is the voice of the poet. The lamenting and anguished voice underpins the entire book. Movement and structure in the book are subverted by voice, making them largely irrelevant. McAloran chose a loose structuring which is sufficient to carry the reader along the black waves of exile and lament.
It is as if voice finds him/self in a degraded and vicious reality. He sings what he sees and dreams, his memory of wholeness. The reading of of the nothing of is difficult, but worth it.
10-
a droplet of blood
.turning lest the light expires
speaking the language
.of the veins
unto the none else/
.fragrance offrom pulse beats
from of subtle butchery. .
Chime unto closeRot/
Strike aloud till
Stillness bears the
ice of bloodless night
In a roomscape
\of final emptiness
Here/absent traces
Mocking the stitch of the wound
Shroud-bound by
Vapours/
…..colours emptied
.
Ever to mock the
violent silence
With gritted teeth
…Till spark extinguished
Cold weight of naught
A palm closing over final eye
from of subtle butchery
Chris Murray 