ally Incorrect Sketches of Marine Animals
By Sarah Dawson
Author of Poetry After Ink
Copyright 2011 Sarah Dawson
Table of Contents
Barceloneta, May 2010
Observed on a Zante beach, 2002
Anemones
Reedmace
Lug worms, rag worms
Hastings Beach, 1992
Our Eroding Coastline
Warp awaits weft
Boring Sponge
Shadow Catchers Introduction
Korperfotogramm
River Taw (ice), February 1997
Out of Shot
Vessel No.3
Body Dissolutions
Barceloneta, May 2010
You were miming breaststroke – the universal
sign for swimming. Found the beach, whilst I was
watching silken laundry sea that lapped the
pillars. Beneath, fish were sewn from thousands
of silk scraps – seams that faced out, unhemmed
loose threads, labels, that you ached to cut
they brushed each other; coats they ached to shrug off
Observed on a Zante beach, 2002
1.
Where vessels branch, the delta of my left foot’s swollen -
skin’s a membrane just enclosing liquid; cells stretched
to accommodate my warm blood. Unlike pastel hued
line drawings, showing cross sections of skin – a corner
turned up to reveal the dermis – flesh seems rich
in colour, more in flux. I press the swollen veins
which flatten, dark blood backing up, until released.
This pool of me won’t stagnate, stranded halfway
up the beach; I run down through the grains, like tidal
water drawn to sea.
2.
Plastic bit between my teeth; I concentrate on holding
my head vertical, and parallel to temperamental
waves. My mind drifts, water slips – the salt that lights a pathway
through me – does it burn the gills of fish? And do their tightly sewn
blue sequins chafe with sweat? How do they rub sharp particles
from eye ducts, clear their throats? The sea is thick with needling
phytoplankton, stirring shoal momentum, force made up
of flickers.
Anemones
1.
Downpours spring the moths from shower curtains, settle
on my naked belly. Damp, they can be flicked away,
they land as detritus, around my island,
cast in porcelain. I will admit that
in my arrogance, I want to live alone,
the only moving, noise creating thing inside
this sealed off space. I hate the roaches congregating
for their cigarettes behind the basin.
In this absence of air vents, or windows, dampness clings
to surfaces, as if a sea-carved cave at low tide.
2.
On Maenporth beach, as children, we’d awaken
each anemone, asleep under a film of dampness
in its granite cave. We’d goad them to react.
Our flat was poised above the sea. Before sleeping
I’d have to check inside each stiff oak drawer; each space
belonging too much to itself – or to someone who walked
quite comfortably below those too-low ceilings.
I would dream I woke, and checking on each drawer
again, I’d find a key. I’ve drafted many plots from there.
3.
His hairs accumulate in dunes behind the cistern.
Late at night, I check for roaches there, in tile gaps,
blackened by the mould. A single placid polyp
clings there. Cupping water in my hands I douse him,
blind limbs tumble out. ‘He’ll catch the moths that wake me,
landing on my sleeping face’, I think, but soon
anemones spread over your decaying grout, impinge
upon my island, tug my fine hairs as I shower.
Reedmace
Squinting through wire mesh
at densely packed reedmace stalks,
long leaves peeling off
to dance; subterfuge.
Imitation marshland, just
a clump bordering
scrub, but imagine
the richness: tits and finches,
form a chattering heart
that splinters.
Later, reconvenes
emboldened by the sturdy
reedmace heads, in bloom
though looking austere
not like flowers should. Like tame
deer who’d allow you
close enough to run
their antlers through your hands. But
they’ll implode soon; arms
pierce through them, tumble
out, pathetic reaching limbs
that try to hang on
air, but grasping, fall,
accumulate, leave quiet stalks.
Lug worms, rag worms
Bristle worms frayed threads antagonize each other;
uglier earthworms you’ve plucked from their burrows.
The bristle worms burrow round u-shaped bends – uglier
earthworms. You’re sifting for sediment cast off;
the bristle worm’s burrow. Round u-shape bends, worms suck down
then strain the sediment. You cast off, lifting
your iron spade, sand the worm sucks down. You strain
through the sediment, gradually shifting the coarse sand
with your iron spade. Sand’s abandoned in heaps across the beach.
Shifting the coarse sand, you pluck the worm out
of its burrow, abandoned in heaps across the beach. Plucked from
our burrows, now exposed, our frayed threads
antagonize each other.
Hastings Beach, 1992
Our beach house rode up on the tide at night;
when it was lain down, old, cheap carpet ridged
in stiff peaks, it seemed strange that the cabbage-like
sea kale and shrubs spouting hard grapes had stayed
anchored. I laid down inside, my cheek pressed
against the white, painted wood; willed the spring high tide
up, over the rubble, coarse sand, and chipped
limpet shells, beach glass, I wanted the water
to rock me. To rush, retract, over coarse sand
whilst the sea kale stayed anchored. I’d picture
the groynes as the blades of a water wheel
churning the beach glass and limpet shells outside.
Our Eroding Coastline
You read the rocks with crystals in were spherical, and lighter,
so, a sorry sandstone, shrunken by the tide in each hand,
judge. And hurl the lighter at a stack of granite, though
your poor throw makes it seem to have its own trajectory
- to split in segments – new faces to wear down – crystals
absent. Think the sea is seeking something in the rocks too –
massing back sand grains to blast the skree and slate. Too young
a sculptor, scratching at the essence of his subject
‘til a stub remains. I loved to skirt the sea’s thin lip,
slate ridge pressing the centre of my soles, testing handholds,
each bay we’d pick apart the remnants, sea still in retreat
irrevocably creeping back before you’ve weighed and smashed
&
nbsp; each likely rock. We’d have to climb the scree slope, digging nails
into the dirt and clutching half set in slate pieces, holdings
in the process of eroding. Clutch the crops of grass that mark
the cliff’s edge, lined with pale pink thrift, pendulous roots
Warp awaits weft
so, you can catch a grasshopper, but not a ball? You press
his lever and step back; a stop back prepared for the catch,
though you can’t predict where in that clump he’ll spring from. Perhaps
you can; he lands right inside your cupped hands, unlike
tennis balls; they always bruise your torso. It shows
how determined you are to isolate each source
of buzzing sonar, bounced off you: an effort
to track you down. You need distracting; I ask you
to find me each different grass in the field; you oblige
though you think any vertical stalk is a grass,
so you bring me reeds, rushes, and sedges, a cluster
of colour as rich as a medieval tapestry.
Our bare calves engulfed by bristling tips of the melick
and cats tail; the warp threads. An unused loom anxious
for narrative; scarcely believable static scenes
woven in. But this loom shakes in mild winds; we were kinder
to dismantle it. Peel back each long ridged leaf, pick
each kernel, pluck each grain, knot stalks and snap hollow
tubes. The insidious grains, prematurely plucked,
stuck to our palms; they were barbed.
The unraveled field travels with us.
Boring Sponge
I apologise – you found
my weakly beating cilia.
Caught coercing nutrients
towards my central cavity.
Collide and apologise;
headless colony of blind cells.
We amend ourselves; shuffle
towards our similar cousins.
How did we build silica skeletons
so complicated? How did our acid
burrowing bore out our secret chambers?
Grind us down and press us through a fine gauge
sieve; us blind cells fumble, slowly re-arrange
to form our primitive appendages.
Shadow Catchers
The following poems are inspired by the ‘Shadow Catchers’ exhibition of photograms, which took place at the V&A between October 2010 and February 2011. Photograms are made by placing items directly onto photographic paper and exposing them to light for a period of time. I specifically took inspiration from the following photograms…
Untitled (Korperfotogramm, Munchen), 1965 by Floris Neususs
River Taw (ice) 4 February, 1997 by Susan Derges
Untitled, 2007 by Adam Fuss
Vessel No. 3, 1995 by Susan Derges
Body Dissolutions refers to a series of whole body photograms, similar to the one written about in Korperfotogramm, which were given to their subjects to destroy, by burying them, setting them alight, or flying them as kites until they broke down.
All of the images above are available to view online, as well as biographical information about the artists. However, I hope that it is possible to enjoy the poems without this frame of reference.
Korperfotogramm
He warned me that you’d only care to see
what I placed close to the surface. My bare skin;
white, dimpled, veined, clung to the yet-to-be
photo, my flesh spreading under my weight.
His flashlight felt warm; I fought languor. It pinned
me down, to the slide’s surface. My bare skin once
made him recoil from positioning my limbs
for photos; my flesh spreading under my weight.
I was ‘trapped in the tadpole jar, gasping.’
I made-pretend ‘til my burnt lungs complained.
He didn’t recoil from positioning my limbs
to fit his designs: ‘in a falling dream,’
‘trapped in the tadpole jar, gasping’.
He told me to leap, higher, throw ink around,
then dive deeper, dragging my light body down;
I’d live out his designs.
In my falling dreams,
he’s using chemicals – altering my likeness.
I try to leap, higher, pierce the airtight lid,
rescue my vulnerable latent image;
he warned me it’s all that you’d care to see.
River Taw (ice), February 1997
If there’s movement beneath
the opaque ice window, then
it's well hidden. Droplets draw in,
contracting. Now they reflect until
breached by feet; elusive stream slips
underneath. My blank sheet -
- my primitive camera - infiltrates
beneath opaque ice windows.
Droplets draw in through the seams
of my gloves, testing me. Freeze the scene
with a flash, but the stream slips past, shy
as a mirror. My primitive camera
misses it; captures opaque ice
windows behind. Detailed patterns
of fissures reflect the constricted
landscape; fields like sheets of ice.
If there’s melting beneath,
it’s well hidden.
Out of Shot
an albino, a milksnake; memory
of bolder relatives… just let him go
or else he’ll fall through fingers
you’ll be left holding
a sheath of skin. Grasping
his pastel bands… you have no place
to, like thumbing though strangers’ faded
photographs. Shed his sheath of skin
today; first pierced, then rolled the shoulders
every shrug revealing several rows
of new, reflective scales. His
slumped sheaths catch my darkroom’s
low red lights, like stained glass
windows; opaque. Skin
speaks tactile languages, preserving
textures. Muscles, teeth, intestines
are elsewhere. Bathing, he sheds
the water molecules, nervous
to close behind him. Trying to capture
him with clumsy apparatus; light
and paper. Scaled flesh
out of shot; a ripple flicked
suggests his presence.
Light lolls in new liquid valleys
cast off in his wake. Intricate patterns
that I capture; his shed skin.
Vessel No.3
this chain of spheres that slips
between my thumb and finger’s undersides
they could be globes, or atoms,
nuclei inside unknowable.
Squeeze softly; the fluid bulges, rushing
to conserve its nuclei -
I pause, mustn’t press further.
Far from bilious clouds of frogspawn
tangled chains of toads whose links
disintegrate. Tadpoles still
ill defined, flanks fading out
to fluid. Every embryo
is growing limbs to push it’s brothers
back. Interested light stares,
printing shadow nuclei
onto the river bed. A print unfettered;
spheres that slip away, vanish
like early photographs.
Body Dissolutions
Clutching my own image with awkward
handholds; arm above shoulder aching,
pressing my image against the wind,
it bends submissively, forgiving clammy thumbs
and dulling prints. Bends become folds in gusts,
reversed in wind’s tight turns, they tear
inlets in toes, elbows, thighs.
Trampling up dunes,
how ca
n the slender grasses hold
the sand down, do they whip it back?
They should be whipping harder. Near enough
the peak, I try to tear a hole for kite string, can’t,
just scratch the sleek surface of shadow toes, so
crumple a corner, tie a tight knot around
my not quite diamond portrait. Held aloft
on fingertips, wind hunches, takes it on
his back. The string runs through my relaxed hand