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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
 

Breakers

“I’ve been waiting by a road to another town
for you to reappear as diamonds.”
– Simon Andrews


Only a frayed desert to build on
where magma once mussed the dunes
and burst isthmus after isthmus into the cove,
the sand popped with heat and slicking
the basalt in glass drapes to the sea’s fold,
a broil of steam and salt in the air.

Now the ground is rilled
with lava tubes, bulges
scale through the earth,
miles of knuckles, bones and pipes
with only sorrow for marrow,
sinkholes trammelled
where the world caved
into the melt under the weight
of houses, houses – why risk
houses, chance development
when the islands are hollow-hearted?

How can we hope when our cliffs are soft
and we’re full of collapse, the breakers inside us
singing erosion    shining with crystal    telling their symbols
bolstered by omens    moaning with mistrust    rusting like houses
shushing our cries    raising our hopes    spreading false diamonds
when there’s nothing precious for miles, nothing
indigenous strong enough to stand on.