Embankment Gardens
I heard these grounds are tended
By ex-convicts. I’ve seen them
Crow-footing through the regimented beds,
Nipping the flowering heads clean that can’t stare
At the sun. The drum roll of a sprinkler
Weighs them down with that which yearns them to grow.
“Poetry’s for girls” a passer-by belts.
I show off the pink booklet I’m reading with Vaudevillian
Charisma – “Its the colour of the baby’s room”,
The joke is lost in the garden somewhere.
I hear the snare of water, my eyes
Fall into my lap, unfurling my white neck for surrender.
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An audience on video
They say you can’t see an audience from the stage
But looking back over the jellied images, washed and wrung out
Over years of play, the stars shone.
There they were – newsreaders, humorists, sportsmen,
And their wives, juggling their breathing through laughter,
As the funny man danced out in front of them,
Lit so no shadow would fall on him.
It was like looking at the night sky – a spread of echoes.
Events that happened years ago, revealing themselves,
Disclosing their final moments, then disappearing.
Watching the adult stars of my childhood,
Dashing across a black screen, existing in laughter only,
Then silenced, was enough to fill a few minutes of my time,
From their lifetime’s achievements.
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Alex MacDonald is 24, works and lives in London. He has a rather good blog here where he talks about poetry happenings in the news and elsewhere. We first heard him read him at a launch for a pretty little pamphlet called OOXXOO.You can hear him at that launch too, here:
03 Alex Macdonald Reading by jjbulley
To describe something as simple as VHS recordings so poignantly, and for the poem to remain poignant even after the term 'jellied', is something of an achievement in my eyes. I love the way he manages to instil just the right amount of nostalgia and self-consciousness in his poetry while balancing it with a subtle humour.
He has forthcoming poems published in No. Zine and in Read Dirty to Me.