Boatship: Port Layout Gossips by Matthew Johnstone

Boatship: Port Layout Gossips

Matthew Johnstone

No here one left owning that
                         so noises stay,
a station
heat
             lets nothing touch
             because organ,
because oilskin
             because told in
             islands, to heavy
the intuition,
threw

             out
to
reformation
so
collision, the
             accusation of
territory.
             Because sure
foam, because
             harpoon, because
             sneer, the
stray
             rot.

So what I
have
kept, englishes
that

             surround no island.
Your casting is where
the shade picture works,
             some
plague tore
brogues out.
             My
             far, heard
             mouth
             tighten
             beaks.
This much
the isthmus
collected in,

outsides out every
second or so,
a lit quarter, dances the fog.

Yaw grind in
persistent viscera.
             Surface you
make
             away, oilfire,
             yell among yell.
Stood on chairs,
because
             cenotaph,
vocable
             because
quay, tear

be torn. Merest,

the hand sound a making
glass,
hurled
furring

sea.
About away, but go
that
assumes arc.
Arrow, from.
Place I stacked my own shade.

Matthew Johnstone places poetry with online journals that provide free and entire, or mostly entire, access to the poetry they present: Word For/Word, Gobbet, Timber, Ohio Edit. He is the author of Let's be close Rope to mast you, Old light (Blue & Yellow Dog, 2010), o n e (Inpatient Press, 2015), and Note on Tundra (DoubleCross Press, forthcoming). He co-edits 'Pider (pidermag.com) and hosts the E t A l. poetry readings, both of Nashville, Tennessee.

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