Fred Carter: Two Poems

moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois
strikes me
I like it
                — Nazim Hikmet

salt spray gel
ignite Rosemary
Pink with counterfeit
An orange-coloured day

coming back together xylem sap stuck
to the sense of qualifiers like precision
sanctioned Vessel
elements

is there even Water in the water tower Opposing
reform facility walls a nightlit walkway
fully socialised
pleasantry structural

transport tissue
in vascular anticipation

in our arms

of Breath on you
proportionate

to weather this
struck gum

tendential
aquifer

***

the work of poetry is becoming ever more discernible, like labour, like a mixture of the forms of labour, occurring without dominance. I dreamt that we never learn what it is, writing accessible to all.
                    — Galina Rymbu

Ohio, not an allegory. Holders incapable
to share is not
an option, never choice
or even
                                    you were Given
granular the dunes inside of wind, met conditions
for coming compulsions. suddenly Ours
to lose or Break

this twofold yoke
                            sun-dowse Lothian
                        in total clamour —

american hectic, Clapton wet. what torque
drenched For
        what you will, inverted fact
of the division

where touch forearm and deskwork
never bend away

habit press terminal coast

Note:

Epigraphs are taken from Nazim Hikmet’s “Things I Didn’t Know I Loved,” translated by Randy Blazing and Mutlu Konuk in 1986, and Galina Rymbu’s “How Could I Possibly Take Part,” translated by Joan Brooks Platt in 2017.


Fred Carter lives and works in Glasgow. His pamphlet Outages (2024) is out now with Veer2.