Molly Bloom
  • MOLLY BLOOM
  • Lorrie Goldensohn
  • Blaise Cendrars tr Tony Baker
  • Laurie Duggan
  • Joyce Parkes
  • Barnaby Smith
  • Tony D'Arpino
  • Simon Smith
  • Robert Sheppard
  • John Seed
  • Ken Edwards
  • Elaine Randell
  • Peter Riley
  • ---------
  • MOLLY BLOOM no.2, May 1982
  • Ken Edwards
  • Ric Caddel
  • Elaine Randell
  • Peter Riley
  • Robert Sheppard
  • Aidan Semmens
  • Tony Baker
  • --------
  • Previously in Molly Bloom
  • Editor
  • MOLLY BLOOM
  • Lorrie Goldensohn
  • Blaise Cendrars tr Tony Baker
  • Laurie Duggan
  • Joyce Parkes
  • Barnaby Smith
  • Tony D'Arpino
  • Simon Smith
  • Robert Sheppard
  • John Seed
  • Ken Edwards
  • Elaine Randell
  • Peter Riley
  • ---------
  • MOLLY BLOOM no.2, May 1982
  • Ken Edwards
  • Ric Caddel
  • Elaine Randell
  • Peter Riley
  • Robert Sheppard
  • Aidan Semmens
  • Tony Baker
  • --------
  • Previously in Molly Bloom
  • Editor
  Molly Bloom

aIDAN sEMMENS


PHOTOPLAY

keep the engines rolling
and the boats prepared

we clear a path
through unofficial zones

someone's here already:
screening for tropical disease

* * *

brickface
motley of red
browns : moss
and small flowers
intrude, intrinsic

* * *

leaves of paint (colour
indeterminate) bend out
from weathered boards
                       but it's
        the random shape, lines
        structure of the
                (half-demolished)
        buildings that excite
        your draughtsman's eye
only
        it's not random: innocent,
        maybe, of human design;
        but it hasn't fallen over

* * *

smoky face of
  "your" technician
pops up
   behind the screen,
framed an instant
  by the cables

  the projection flicks into life
  imaging a corpse
      blood matting the hair;
  varying angles
             for the catalogue,
             the investigators,
      or just to pick the best

stop a frame to lift a cover for this collection

* * *

oily hands on the wheel.
a long haul
overland to Hodeidah

          steel, cement, piping
          construction materials

  sand and tar in the treads;
  sheeting and roping
  "battening down the hatches"

* * *

streaks of light cloud
cross the face of the moon
rippling under the oily surface

    urgent quayside voices;
as the ambulance driver is pulled out

* * *

an ordinary arrest:
the youth
covers his face
as he's shoved aboard the van

weegee snaps the snappers

* * *

look at the red of that bench:
its glossy utility; what's
it doing here, among these
stained surfaces
and railway lines/

* * *

the doubledecker bus
pulling away from the queue
by the tall building
of brown glass and dull metal
into the traffic waiting at
the next lights
has become a mere dash
of colour
on the wardrobe door
you call a canvas

even upside down

* * *

plantlife behind the hoardings
where the bomb was,
willowherb and yellow blooms,
food wrappers drifting

* * *

with practised sharpness
    he lifts aside
    wads of fat,
baring a distended gut

        chemical analyses
        inform him
                    cause of death

* * *

feet, too white,
their rough soles

lined in yellow,
a big blob of toe;

neatly tied on with string,
the label

* * *

waiting to hurry
   from the scene
huddled in the middle
    of the back seat

curious faces
press against the glass

* * *

down several storeys to the yard
a fire
         escape

clutching clothes,
looking back

* * *

at the end of the street
on a long pole
the camera swivels
     on automatic
     or remote control

environmental surveillance

* * *

chinese art
in the waiting room
signifies a cuisine

colourful small birds
hermetically sealed in

the tv screen
just out of sight
talks a foreign language


Copyright © Aidan Semmens 1982

poet and editor Aidan Semmens
Previously co-editor of Perfect Bound magazine, Aidan Semmens founded Molly Bloom as a print magazine in 1980, reviving it in its present form as an online poetry presence in May 2013. He is the author of four books of poetry, A Stone Dog (Shearsman Books 2011), The Book of Isaac (Free Verse 2013), Uncertain Measures (Shearsman 2014) and Life Has Become More Cheerful (Shearsman 2017), and edited By the North Sea, an anthology of Suffolk verse (Shearsman 2013).

MOLLY BLOOM: New POETRY in a modernist tradition

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