Anthony Anaxagorou
Structuralism
I will make the sky do something it has never done
like scratch its ear before bending over a rockpool
where I will make it spread itself
wide as smoke watching how it’s grabbed
by carp in sediment backslapping with the force
of a hook into a courtroom where the undertow will
turn light away look I’m deep inside
my convictions courtesy of my big machines
typing as if I know what you’re incapable of knowing
thinking about next year when every school
will become a custody room a healthy squad of Jiu Jitsu
fighters warming up on white mats around Hackney
Rutherford Bolton see I am clapping extremely
fine outside my oak door on the residential street
I was given fantasizing about the aforementioned
how hard it can work
to stimulate economic growth that scrounging
lazy piece of sky taking up space
what about the melting glaciers the looters
discounted Ikea pillboxes cast of corrupt crabs
scuttling with all the arrogance of goose fat I’ll make sure
the sky happens ripping it down chucking it over
the direction I’m headed & this may well be the future
nobody asked for from my gondola I read reports
of larger twin towers a tower at full capacity my grandad’s
council flat families demolished beneath the presidential
tower my foreign body a tourist obsessed
in the shower waiting for the immersion to start
by my window a nation applauds from the bottom of its sky
where there is no more aid militia coerce
gardenias seconds before a bomb bursts ruining
a covey of quails a hospital for children in the debris
children who lay very still on their backs children
who should only be that still when pretending
the centre page of the Guardian
will show a man who resembles my uncle but is not
looking up at the same sky as yesterday you know
the one I mean his stare a whole line of earthquake
hands waiting for anything to fall into them apart from his
daughter’s radio there are other ways I wanted
to live but I’m not so good I upload my best quiche
counting each small heart until an offering
of blonde shikhas begin to chant outside the Hare Krishna
temple eclipsing my round of applause
ANTHONY ANAXAGOROU’s second collection After the Formalities (Penned in the Margins, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2019 T.S. Eliot Prize. He is the founder of Out-Spoken Press.