Jamie McKendrick Poems

We don't know if tomorrow has green pastures
in mind for us to lie down in beside
the ever-youthful patter of fresh water
...

As if I had nothing better to do,
and who says I have, than putting the house
I haven't got in order, I sit at the oak desk
I have got, though really a table not a desk
...

That first day, to break me in,
my hardened comrades
sent me scampering like a marmoset
...

The digging creature has been at work again
out there — first a modest trough with a crest
of dry earth, fit for a starling or a thrush
...

A friend of mine met the son of a man
who it seems was eaten by a polar bear
in Iceland where the bear had stepped ashore
...

The needful thing is missing from the day
but everyone proceeds as though it's fine
— like when we waited for the nightingale
...

I spent all morning in the cafe talking
to a man who'd just survived a car crash.
...

The year began with baleful auguries:
comets, eclipses, tremors, forest fires,
the waves lethargic under a coat of pitch
...

Red-eyed and flinching, Flavius
was applying a depilatory paste
of ivy gum and crushed centipede
...