Fran Lock
he says, whose preferred flag is a blank cheque. on
mornings made pejorative with foxes. pissy macho
stink of them on everything. the grim, diminished
sting of drill, its glitchy phobic diss and bleat. stuck
on repeat. like foxes. solja boys gekkering thin
threat up from behind the wheelie bins. these, our
russet buccaneers, sarcoptic monarchs, swaggering.
hey, there are kids who live in circles in these fluxy
flats, gaunt stooges sent on errands in the petering
sweetness of five a.m. i have seen them. meet in
unruly communion half way home. trammelled
scent of skunk, its soft green feelers groping
a grammar of sleep. somnambulist caesars. pale
laureates of insomnia. something in between. we
have breathed these corners into dawn together.
seen the ornamental resin of my pit bull’s eyes
catch fire. resilience, he says, who thinks all dogs
are hounds. sleek forms to thread his vengeance
through the hedgerow, fen, and meadow. no. he
doesn’t know. he has not read their fickle glyphs,
acrylic scrolls of early-warning, alphabet of risk
along the tracks. these narrow pastures are our
country. aggy edgelands slack with flowers. hey,
there are women here i’ve seen to gather yarrow.
could best a falling feather. women who could
intercept the ricochet of rain. exist in two
dimensions, travel as both particle and wave
between the food bank and the chemist. women
who remix the curt eclipse of mogadon and vodka
into aria. or, turning on a rainbow’s lathe, draw
nectar from the bitter dregs of afternoon. fold
every scrap of plant life into fable. names to talk
this tundra into spring; to make our rags and worts
and banes the cups of kings. resilience, he says,
for whom all language is an anthem or
a gambit. tongue as classifying blade, our
vulgar taxa stripped for parts. but we have
seen enchanter’s mantle transmute bare
backyards to gold. burdock, chervil, ragged
mallows. kept the raving ghosts of bailiffs
from our doors with fennel stem. sharpened sight
with elder and with thistle. men, the corrugation
kicked clean out of them. eyes like slots in
fruit machines. the zero hour they penalise
to frenzy. these men have grown crow garlic
too, could recognise the waft of mint. monkshood
hint of danger. columbine and cuckoo pint, snug
hangman in its cobra’s hood. dog rose, bittercress
and keck. cow parsley. common things that prick
calls weeds. words atrophied into slogan, gravel
trough where meaning dies. resilience indeed,
flapping his long mouth like a sleeve. hush, our
concrete acre stirring. vixen, starling, world
on fire.
…
Because politicians love that word. And in recent years it has become a useful get out clause for both climate changes deniers and those who would make a fetish out of working class survival. If resilience is some kind of moral virtue, then those of us who are not thriving are failing. If we are resilient, if the planet is resilient, then nobody has a duty of care toward us, nobody is responsible for the shit they do to us or put us through. It isn’t a coincidence that the poor are disproportionately affected by climate change, by corona virus, by anything else the world happens to throw at us. I have come to loathe this word with mounting heat and passion, and yet, we are surviving, we are finding ways to exist, to resist, to live. And they’ll have to learn from that in the end, from us, because we know how to go without and make do with less. It’s all our futures, we’re just ahead of the curve. Sometimes it feels as if the way we live- the city, these houses- is hostile to life. All life. But we are alive. Nature pushes back in a variety of surprising ways. It infiltrates. It adapts. We adapt too. There’s hope in that.
Fran Lock is a some-time itinerant dog whisperer, the author of seven poetry collections and numerous chapbooks, most recently Contains Mild Peril (Out-Spoken Press, 2019). Fran has recently completed her Ph.D. at Birkbeck College, University of London, titled, ‘Impossible Telling and the Epistolary Form: Contemporary Poetry, Mourning and Trauma’. She is an Associate Editor at Culture Matters.