From Childhood
Now freed from a tongue-tied scurvy, I dream
of the lime groves of Temple Gardens, where
a death rattle’s nothing more than a gypsy
dance. Fate’s so easily distracted by
simple temptation, I know here
in the Great Wen, the doors of this hovel
will never let me pass. My childhood
relics arranged on the bed, this scrabble
of winter starves the heart. Maggots, nearly
cured by fermenting bitters, perform
their nightly circus. Though I had a morning
caller, I marked time until the footfalls
vanished—to go on fathoming
myself the first and last of my kind.
Sidewalk Screevers
Propped against London Bridge in whatever midday
shade they find, where you, fellow traveler, might
hunker like the wise fly of August that expires
overnight to sell your wares. A few
pennies for a catchy saw; a shilling, Good
Sir, for a rhyme? A sketch, perhaps, of Willie
Pitt the Younger’s prat shiny
as a Tory cheek, forehead bowed
as a brigantine low with spice for Hogarth’s
kitchen? A pure one—young as Aphrodite’s
teat—has sketched a Madonna to trample till she’s mopped
away at daybreak. Beside her, fingers twisted like a Belgrave
shrub, an old hand chalks a winding
staircase to the king of an army of locusts.
A Visit to Thomas Cross, Apothecary
Arsenic, laudanum, clap, or pox? We
accommodate. Another jar of Dover’s
powder, please, good for washing hooves
or to clear the mind—we can board the early
carriage to a forgotten Arcadia, where the hides
of blackened horses smolder on rooftops
from colliery chimneys. Here’s a sonnet
for a pork pie, please, a hatchet
for a tankard. Here’s an expletive
to express affection, a half pence
for my fortune. Don’t forget love’s phantom slips
its shade into the careless mouth: we need
no spoon for such hunger, the Spanish
itch nor Bible to parse the human error.
A NOTE ON THE POEMS
These poems are from a book-length sequence that reimagines in 57 sonnets the life of the 18th-century poet Thomas Chatterton. At age 16, Chatterton invented the imaginary persona of a 15th-century poet he named Thomas Rowley and tried to pass off the poems as the work of a previously unknown priest to the literati of London. When that and other attempts to help his mother and sister out of poverty failed, at age 17 he committed suicide. Decades after his death, he was credited by Coleridge and Wordsworth as the founding spirit of Romanticism.
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George Rawlins has recent publications in The Common, New Critique, New World Writing, and One Hand Clapping. His forthcoming poetry collection, Cheapside Afterlife (April 2021,
Longleaf Press at Methodist University), reimagines in 57 sonnets the life of the 18th-century
poet Thomas Chatterton.