Just a Natural Consequence of Their Design, Just Part of Their Natural Life Cycle
it is strange to watch four towers blow up
in the fog
playing peek-a-boo like they knew
like they wanted the local papers to say
Our Monoliths Remained Untamed Till the Last
or In Typical Fiddler’s Fashion,
They Are Going Out on Their Own Terms
the skyline afterwards was much the same
as it had been for most of the morning
amateurs in the crowd asked questions
such as which ones? and where are they?
while standing directly in the pantomime line
and we shouted back behind you!
on Facebook, Shaun begged the ether
rather late in the day
if the demolition could be cancelled
because he couldn’t see clearly
the post was not reported
the towers were looming
we’d gathered in cloud
a lady in a beret stood for three hours
in snow on the pavement by her tripod
far too far away to capture anything
I stared at the corner of a house
willing the hyberboloids to materialise
and darken, like a nude’s underwear
on a mug that changes colour in heat
a cooling tower cannot be embarrassed
but it can be annihilated, reduced
to a worthy absence
a scar is the mark left when you destroy a thing
it is not the thing
a scar requires there to have been a removal
it exists in the after
it implies having missed, like Shaun,
who stayed home in the end, the bulk of the action
as with any change of state, there is a pause
our legs spin
we have chosen unknowing
we have chosen the cliff
the clouds did not part
but they thinned
same as how nothing is ever complete
it was 9:36 when Grace pressed
the button a cable unsnapped
from the plastic block she was holding
like a gleeful hoover cord putting itself away
Grace has mixed emotions about winning the raffle
with the comforting landmark gone
how will she know when she’s home?
her son is sad the view from his bedroom window
is changing
Grace doesn’t mention her feelings post-initiation
she shares a video from her husband’s phone
as a child I had a recurring dream
about winning a raffle I wasn’t supposed to enter
and under the sudden storm clouds and hail
running away
my father’s voice booming
like the crack of four towers coming down
the structure collapses like a thin chocolate shield
doused in hot liquid caramel
I put a chocolate ball like an oyster in my mouth
in the revolving restaurant where we would try to impress
the billionaire who eventually sacked us
and its form imploded
in one expensive second
this wasn’t a failure though
I’d played my role
the towers fold like soft forms in fire
like kites caught in trees
like the fresh moves of inflatable men at car dealerships
being fanned through the knees
like pylons collapsing
like parachutes on top of my body starved of wind
I want to watch the enormous shrink
photos of the four resultant chicken-pox stains
on the ground
make me gag
just dust now
we’re ghosts inhaling the insides of hoover bags
the material keeps coming
it will keep on coming
they are designed to collapse into their own pits
not to disturb anything
to pop in a footprint
this is a date, I said
and kissed your cheek
the fog was brown and orange like when the Sahara comes
and coats us
the pub was rammed
another piece of history flattened
people were drinking Heineken on the street
High Point, Bradford
after Bradford & Bingley Building Society
“the last-gasp of a sort of Heath-Wilsonian regional resurgence,
at a time when ‘financial services’ were not synonymous with the
corporate casino-ism of the City of London, but a flourishing of
century-old Victorian independent mutuals, and northern self-
sufficiency”
Twentieth Century Society
if the unconscious is involved
in the design of the building
its knife-slash eyes
its mosquito-net Fontanas
keeping the prey at bay
(but hold two palms together
see what shape they make)
when I stay in a hotel
I always want the top one
a room or a bunk bed the higher the better
I want the view from a distance
but that is not my life
it was obvious
first thing I saw (our eyes will go a certain way)
we know what we’re looking for
it was obvious
so obvious they’d fuck us
trifecta
by taking the third away
if the unconscious is involved in the design
of a building then why don’t we consult it
when we take a thing away?
______________
Lydia Unsworth’s latest collection is Mortar (Osmosis). Her next collection Arthropod, will be published by Death of Workers Whilst Building Skyscrapers in 2024. A new pamphlet, These Steady Bulbs (above/ground), is also forthcoming. Pubbed in Shearsman, Oxford Poetry, Bath Magg, Ambit, etc.
These poems were selected by Anthropocene Guest Editor Tom Branfoot.
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