Antony Rowland: Two Poems

Coronation Day

Elks are potted amongst the drine,

sympathomimetics against the pearls

as ice clocks break to simber, pines

halted from blur with your neck as

train lakes are frozen to cross your sleep.

Fieldfares interrupt Jyväskulä plaza:

you shiver at the frieze, icing its dight.

The Silent Church birches its closure.

Your welcome meat is tinned in the halli,

coddled in wood. Your Lappi crimps

free from estates, euryhaline creamed

into lohikeitto or roe frozen in state.

The Rock Church nestles its flock

to an absence of queen. So deprived

you are cleaned of oxygen: your head

is a ghost, snowed into grouse.

A mast ends on Liisankatu street

as Karjala and Sandels flatten the night.

a

Ouchy

We dip when the meat stall is open,

stoke the algae crusted with Blanc

and splash the mountains tipped with lucre.

Rousseau is circled by Patek Phillipe.

Seagull guttural cheeks the deck: wind curbs

the Jet d’Eau to ghost. You melt into steps

and wasp mayonnaise: our glasses touch

but there is no sound. Yachts stick the bois

and a swan necks its promenade, while you

get ready, twice. Low storms boil

the crossières in the cantons

of Neuchâtel and Vaud. Pochards shadow

the green feeders; your lipstick botched

on Ouchy waves. Today, you have broadened

your sock palate and the water avoids

its history. Nowty. Umbrellas wrapped

in the glacial vista tempt your mood.

Julie drowns in The Nouvelle Heloises.

Antony Rowland has published four poetry collections: The Land of Green Ginger (Salt, 2008), I Am a Magenta Stick (Salt, 2012), M (Arc, 2017) - described by Peter Riley in The Fortnightly Review as ‘an original and thoughtful handling of a major European modernist mode’ - and Caldebroc (Arc, 2023). He was awarded the Manchester Poetry Prize in 2012, and his poems were included in the anthology Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010).