Poem

There is a field that will persist in everything:
                     what means crucial means
if there never was a thought deflected not to be
                     a path so far gone? ...

1.
Your beard intrigues me, its rough mystery, patterned complexity.
I imagine burrowing animals under your skin that raise ...

body’s habitude begin
with buoyancy, a saturated skin ...

I’d ask you to reappear from behind the wet blanket, Sun,
But the ozone has been eaten by refrigerants
And we can’t take your glare. We are people
Of the skin cancers, tuned by solar flares ...

'101, Taipei' by Nicholas Wong, 'Compass' by Eileen Chong, 'The Abstract Blue Background' by LK Holt, 'Decoding Paul Klee’s Mit Grünen Strümpfen (With Green Stockings) 1939' by Katherine Healy, and 'breather' by Tracey Slaughter.

'Dancing with Stephen Hawking' by John Foulcher; 'The Mirror Hurlers' by Ross Gillett; '63 Temple Street, Mong Kok' by Belle Ling; 'Searching the Dead' by Andy Kissane; 'Raven' by Mark Tredinnick.

The shortlist: 'My Father's Thesaurus' by A. Frances Johnson; 'Precision Signs' by Lachlan Brown; 'Constellation of Bees' by Julie Manning; 'That Wadjela Tongue' by Claire G. Coleman; 'South Coast Sonnets' by Ross Gillett.

Conveniently located next to Perrache
railway station, the Hôtel Terminus,
Lyon, is distinguished by its extensive ...

I see you then: long and veined with red like the closed
pod of an asphodel bud: if you opened now it would be
with the strangeness of a lily its scent edging between sweat,
and the musk that marks a territory: I have not forgotten you ...

You’ll be lost in the headlong city, turning your oar, older
Her house needs to stay open for another October ...