About Text Size: larger | normal | smaller
Likestarlings is a place for talking in poems. We pair poets with poets and they write a sequence of six new works by responding in turn to one another. Our palaver blog goes beyond poetry to discuss collaboration in theory and in practice. Please take a look, and feel free to add comments, opinions and suggestions here. Read poems here
 

On a level plane


By the desert of the fingerboard:
ear to the soundhole,
resting on smooth wood.
Strings that have wound themselves looser
over nights of silence – plucked,
the harmonic curves, gains, turns
and we can read the grain from its throb.

In the pocket: paper, comb at the ready –
could go either way.
Back in the bathroom: a bar of soap
with the impression of a key
pressed in. It will wash away,
while the wind watches.

Scaffoldings of other buildings
stand around, naked architecture
sculpting space. But here
we use space to sculpt the thing,
rough melody roughed up from nothing.

Instruments, notes, paraphernalia
threaten to hold it, but can’t.