Carrie Etter & Zoë Skoulding

 

[untitled]

a what-if struck against a hard surface
echoes in syllables to build out of sound
the walls of the city on this wind this
wave of air a voice propelled by circles

in ascent dispersing by molecules
the shell of what-if smashed to leave
this wet core in a barren alley the wind
dropping, gentling, which is to say

that she was in bits but never could
be the whole story shored against
shoes on the ruined pavement a sidewalk
where the plage runs underneath

a ruin so ordinary as to be
even as she culled it
the deep crack in the cement
and willing it to widen

as each side of a cube adds up
immovable until removed by force
the ground is flattened the drains sunk
air circles but the words won't set

won't settle for this plateau
when the clasp can and may
at the wet core of the syllable
going in the push

of rain over slate a brisk
pace shatters bridges
when might turns to may
a voice rattles in its shell

knocking to crack
and arcing into present tense
may may may will
that voice that

holds the future up
in arched ceilings parallel ribs
the project of weight
unbalanced to say

lurching toward a kind of grace
the gravity of the tension
between arc and line
speech and

the least resistance
nothing more than
filling in the blanks
that held her down

hold her yet
the clasp beseeching
with all the weight
of announce and claim

 

 

Copyright © 2008, Carrie Etter & Zoë Skoulding.

Carrie Etter teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University. Her first collection, The Tethers, was publsihed by Seren in June 2009, and a second, Divining for Starters, will be published by Shearsman Books in 2010 or 2011. A chapbook, Yet, was published by Leafe Press in 2008. Zoˆ´ Skoulding is editor of Poetry Wales, and the author of two collections from Seren, The Mirror Trade (2004) and Remains of a Future City (2008). She teaches at Bangor University.