New Work
I’m continuing to work on a prose manuscript as I have been for the last few years. The provisional title is Metaphor and Silence and I am looking for a publisher.
I’m working on the fifth collection which currently has the working title One Winged Birds. Below is a sample track, already published in an ancient edition of Iron.
MacKenzie on the Couch
Trawling the Minch for fun one night,
I dredged up towards dawn
dismembered bodies, disembodied heads
with great white staring eyes.
Weary, I was close to seeing
my own face in that Hydra haul.
Bearing in mind my captaincy, I was obliged
to listen to each one’s life story;
to arbitrate in petty quarrels
long since redundant, mete out punishment.
In the role of legislator, I was their captive.
Sometimes I hit out at the mouth that spoke.
That accidental trawl cleaned my heart of love;
on that desolate shelf there was only power,
its unreal reeds waving. I grew ugly, cruel, mean.
The years passed me,
ghostly freighters in the night,
the deadly rumble of their engines undersea.
I could not bear that landfall,
could not face the solace, the reassurance of lovers:
in their arms I stuffed myself
between the fingers of dismembered men.
As the light went out, I saw them glowing
with the iridescence of the ocean.
Julian Turner 