ian seed




FLAWLESS AVENUE

I couldn't rename something longer, those times kneeling down. The hand has left a stain, the city without a hangman. I came here to  capture the freshness of the moment. And they despised them of  another brethren. It's only a piece of abandoned scaffolding, blood  and hair stuck to one side. You removed the sentence because it had no relevance, but the sentence hung around for a lifetime, tingling  in the palms of your hands. No one believed you, stroking grey hair.  The photo was taken on the eve of war, eyes calm and confident. The  blow arrived unseen. One side of the face was visible through the  dark pane. I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman close enough  to touch.


ALMOST

Only one island among others. Beyond the thin stream, where  footprints vanished, nobody noticed you waiting, particularly at night. The string of notes was bent to your desire, dancing just  below the surface, marking your progress, although at that time invisible. I leaned over your lips. It seemed an odd miracle that my  feet were moving, taking me from one side of the road to the other.


NIGHT SHIFT

From a distance the trees look joined together. The hills exist as  an etching, not yet awake. He seems to have been standing there all night. It's the first time you've smiled at him, though you?ve seen  him before. Crushed leaves by the track, the moment of freedom when  you board the train. A door slides open, shuts again. A man sits  opposite you. You dare not look up into his face. Empty rooms of  abandoned houses, a curtain fluttering in a smashed window. You?ll  need to get milk and bread. He gets up from his seat when you do.


CHARITY

You pick up where the thread left off, enter a landscape the  people around you are too busy to see. Time to reclaim, if it is a  question of reclaiming at all. What does 'fond of' mean in this  context, where you are dazzled by sunlight? They appear from  nowhere, pieces of a puzzle that won?t fit, but beautiful as  fragments. It would be a mistake to wait at this point.  You have to  go on, try to reach 100, a destiny that  would weigh on your  conscience if you hadn?t slipped around the corner into the next  street.




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ian seed edits Shadow Train.  He writes poetry, fiction and reviews, as translator. His  last collection was Rescue (2002). Work has recently appeared in  Dream Catcher, Great Works, Green Integer Review, Litter, PN Review,  Poetry Nottingham, and Stride Magazine. Future plans for publication  include a book of prose poems and a tranlsation of Pierre Reverdy's  Le Voleur de Talan.



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