David Rushmer

MEETING ME HALFWAY (after The Meridian by Paul Celan)

“offspring, glowing
appears eternal.”

I

              (language, a physical shape within breath…)


              going to their death together
the grave
              this passage opens
                            to stone
              beyond

I have placed
              you
              among others

              perhaps
                            in order
                            to breathe

              in other words.

.

            return to
                            time forgotten



II

              (language as shape, a direction of breath…)


                            I am looking for
              the place,
                            his grave
                                        we locate

                            his step
                                        the sky below

sudden opening
              of an encounter

                                        a turning of our breath
                                                    in the same direction.

.

                            our origin
              speaks only
                                        of the limits
              of the possibilities it opens
                            in the encounter

                            another figure
                                                    achieved by the eye
                                                    questioning
only the space of speaking.

.

                                        you come
                            into
                            question

                            open, empty
                                        in the light

                                        time
                                        a circle
                            of

                                                the impossible
                                    touched.



    BEHIND THE EYES (from Depth Charge)

I only glimpsed
              that fragile
              fluttering of eyelashes

and speak or paint or dream
beyond atrocities
              before him

              “every girl is the queen of the world”

a ladder
              of wild grasses
              enters an unknown
                                       sleep
              to prepare our arrival

my bare hands
tighten
his breaking voice
              you’re feeling
              against the wall

                                                      half of
              my body -              I scrape my knees
wait for the darkness

the small veins
                            spread
             in the sky
              cover my body
                            everything that is naked

              my head
                            entirely vision
                                         hunting
                                                      a space
somewhere inside the mouth



              TONGUE TO TONGUE (from Depth Charge)

language to language, body to body
              the cosmic distance
                            so frail beneath my fingers

                            created dust

              the page of writing
                            in myself

                          skinned

David Rushmer has published artworks and poetry in many journals and websites since the 1990s, including most recently; BlazeVOX, Epizootics, E.ratio, Human Repair Kit, Otata, and Shearsman. His first full length collection of poetry, Remains to Be Seen, was published by Shearsman in 2018. He works at the English Faculty Library, University of Cambridge.