Heart Madrigal

I mist snake plants and google the lifespan of sparrows

*

from biblical angles my pelvis resembles a coup

*

now that I have cut my hair, my skull brings forth its ancient embarrassment

*

I have waited thirty five years for this casserole to matter

*

the blood remembers études and moves accordingly with rubato

*

having never licensed elaboration, I have organised a trial

*

not a murmur – just a long finish

*

the heart that answers back

Anything But Endocarditis

bleacher mills, landlocked cloth

*

the firmness of a bristle strip

*

resurfacing but not of roads

*

thick fir, buckled pulse

*

a plague on these composite towns

*

bright, unequivocal song

*

swamp reeds over thorax, a desert glow

*

full body, fruit-forward

*

boys sulking like a moon

*

straw-yellow, the signature notes

*

the sweetest blandishing plasma

The First Murmur

was dipped in orange trunks, indecision

*

underwater, a little kingdom of shadows

*

bathed in shallow oxygen, in sapphire

*

struggling with the drag, chopping – at reservoir, at heath

*

plucked down quickly like just another liquid

*

the water closing around it like a fist

*

and the shingle still twinkled, and the rind was astonishing

*

and the sunlight still hurt

*

jagged digestifs to the clouds that chimed

*

the chamber music of all panic – spangling my ribcage like an oath

________________

Jack Barker-Clark is a writer from a valley in West Yorkshire. His stories and poems have appeared in 3:AM, Ninth Letter, The London Magazine, Prototype and elsewhere.