Featured Poet: Claire Trevien

To help cope with the post-NPD comedown, I'm delighted to be able to post two poems by Claire Trevien.


Love from,

On my wall I pinned
the postcards you sent me from
Malta, Ibiza, Gomera, Greece . . . My fingers
jumped from pools of fluorescent water
to cats haunting

crusty archways. I used to pine
at your absence — an idea — as I fingered
those battered papers haunting
my wall. Each picture was your face watered
down by time, even the stamps smiling from

their contained box. My fingers
would trace the images from
the cards until they unpinned.
Once, you gave me Madrid, a water
fountain, but your words failed. My haunt

would always be wrong: you’d pinpoint
a boulevard rather than the street it was (or water
it down to a lane) and your signature varied from
“your father” to “Joel”. I sent its crumbs to haunt
the wind, but eventually my fingers

chased those scattered scraps pinned
inside bins, imprinted, or sailing watery
grass. I rescued my wronged address from
the pond and the litter man’s fingers,
though your signature is still out there, haunting.

My fingers stopped trying to pin you down,
you sent no more hauntings from over the water.


Ties
for Paul C.

My coat wipes against unripe
blackberries, his fingers ride
the brambles for berries fried
by too much sun; my stick bites

through the grass a path, stinging
nettles rub his thighs; flies sing
and the skies are caught licking
corners and bony treetops . . .

*

He finds the conkers too damp,
or thieved by squirrels; he finds
them too small to use, I find
their shape can fit in my palm

wholly - they captivate me
as if the key to all is
in their shape, their solid brown
arabesques, tied forever.


Claire Trévien is a Franco-British poet. She has published an e-chapbook of poetry with Silkworms Ink called 'Patterns of Decay' and a pamphlet with Salt Publishing called 'Low-Tide Lottery' from which these poems come. She is the editor of Sabotage Reviews.