on the seashell’s whorled tongue (fern/hill)
land of my fathers? my fathers can keep it!
cried dylan thomas, son of the sea, at the conch’s coarse sough,
stinging the wind
with american death. his tomb watched spring daze your nain’s
fern
hill -
and as his words dim in the bristol cruisers’ smoke, my needling fingers
chart your gums. there’s no truth in the ringed peaks of your mouth’s north, yet
the tremors of nos da surge from your tongue. and they glow as my
polaris, when i paddle through penarth’s murky waters, so i can
map the dips in your breath’s coastline. the past wobbles in your loose front
tooth: you first lost it playing bulldog as a kid. if history is
that concrete wall you hit, by the old school, we’ll pluck its molars
from the stone-beach, and toss them out to sea. and when we reach
the pier, we’ll watch tides baptise the new race, encrusted from our blood’s flood:
inde genus durum sumus experiensque laborum
et documenta damus qua simus origine nati.
we'll laugh if they’re born twice like we do when your twin drinks, then slurs
some 60’s ode to english gardens. he takes after your mother
but with slimmer thighs. still, they quicken in swigs of tesco white wine. once,
she glimpsed me, then shuffled your childhood photos to cast a tarot curse:
but i watched you grow, in the black ink’s dead light, and wondered how many
lives you’ve lived. with your left eye always bent inside, did you know
you would find me, every time?
or did it take the poplars’ pierced shade, bloodstained in the brecon sun,
for you to catch
the grassnake’s hiss?
we'd string crushed cider cans to its carcass, if the end meant our ghosts
could still talk through the walls: meet at lavernock spar, they whispered
each sunset, just before the off license closed. when the moon glowed, we
gathered twigs as herons yelped through the reeds, and the bonfire’s flames aged
the smoky mulch by the lake. i prayed to see you grow from bough-
broken blue to the blaze breathing the breeze, so midges could suckle
the years left beneath our flesh until they were gods, well-fed. we'd only
mute the speaker in the flare of police sirens: how many songbirds
fly to and -
then stand as still as the trees.
outside mold-branched panes, your father’s saw grits its fangs before barking
down the crunch of autumn leaves. to this day, your hands shake on the wheel:
is it from his bite, that winter night, central square etched deep, into
your icy veins? when you look back in the traffic mirror, do you see
the bloodied body of the BBC broadcaster he beat there,
or did the speared snowflakes melt on his bruises -
stop, please! i swear i'm not
gay -
?
now when his toyota truck pulls out of the front drive, i lead
you into the rosy sunrise. and i kiss you as my boy, who shines.
and the rimed gutter
leaks:
next april, i'd read the peaches when george drove us across swansea
bay. you said, bold to write about wales with the letters that mark her
open grave.
but i write about you, i said, is that not
enough?
the engine droned on through the traffic until we reached mumbles,
where the pier’s planks caved in like a shattered ribcage – a coracle
could never beach upon these heart-thrashed bones. god in the abbey said,
no, his gouge had rusted with the blood of welsh adams. so the gulls
circle the independent chip-shops like vultures, to salt their beaks
with the sizzles of oily friers, the tourist’s palm-sweat on bronze change,
and the waves’ wet taunting on the severn breeze. they holler at us
until we taste port talbot’s fumes, and watch the white sand collapse
into the shadows of a mine.
whose hourglass drains the grains?
your pupils char too and blood blooms through your tears, yet your eyes could still
meet me. and i could fall like an apple, from the sprig-snap to
the grassy bough-shade, trusting you to catch me each time,
mine,
o,
mine
?
i've held onto the seashells we collected. they lie
on my bookshelf between candles and english
anthologies. they'll pass to my children, echoing
fern
hill, when you’re a drowned mollusc and i'm
a new york hospital ward.