I
As in me, the lean femur which articulates the hip.
The least fussy of shapes, provident for what might accompany it:
A qualifying action, a syntactical pause, an adjective.
At best untethered by billowing arabesques, stark as a snooker cue
Fully undressed, a wire with a message at either end.
The grasped banister in a universe of curves.
The primary number, the palindrome, one from every direction.
One for every pair of eyes.
One simple stroke of the hand.
A Geologist Pleads with Eyjafjallajökull
Before you settle like a well-spent lover
back into the cooling fluids of the act,
before you leave me with just a fistful
of pallid muck and pumice to put aside for inspection,
before any of these lonely textures, I implore you:
burst again.
A little more this time, a small bit harder.
Do it with stealth enough to pluck the airplanes
clean as feathers from the sky, summon your grey insults
from the stomach of the earth, seethe
those raucous fricatives through your crooked smoker’s
teeth, throttle the elegant sky, breathe into it
your fatal breath.
Allow me once more
to announce your name to the world, afford
me another interview on the evening news.
Then smother the earth, scorch the thing,
that I might not be on it for much longer,
but rather under it, in you.
David Nash is 25 years old, born in Cork, Ireland and graduated from UCC with a BA in English and French literature in 2007. In 2009 he moved to London to start the MA course in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, where he won the Pat Kavanagh Prize for outstanding portfolio, so far the only poet to do so. He currently works as a French language tutor.