Five Poems By Grant Tarbard

Grant Tarbard is the former editor of The Screech Owl, co-founder of Resurgant Press, a reviewer and on Three Drops From A Cauldron’s staff. He has worked as a journalist, a contributor to magazines, an interviewer and a proof reader.


His first chapbook 'Yellow Wolf’ was published by WK Press and his first full collection published by Lapwing are out now and a collection published by Platypus Press will be available later in the year.

With a Sea I Pour


My heart is a weapon, a chrysalis 
enclosing her hand that grows with creeper
and berries in autumn’s cloud which kisses
spring in salvos of June, a scent of her.
My head is a nest chock full of whicker 
spectres that bellow in baritone with stretched  
gum that rounds the equator’s grey whisker,
on the back streets other side I am etched.
My lungs are a spinning plate that smashes 
into ash, fag ends stubbed out on the floor.
The old blood congeals to sawdust, gnashes
ankles of fair girls kept in a drawer.
My kidneys are sailors drifting from shore 
in a paper boat with a sea I pour.


Mosaic of Rooms


Dissolve the ceiling away
to beneath, a mosaic of rooms
which make the imagery
of the underneath.
Mounting the stairs,
descend the banister, 
capture the soft notes of the sofa.

Your twisting scent is nailed 
to this stage play of cinder,
melting the witch of concrete,
subjacent to the loam of grubs,
drifting down to Poseidon of the sewers.
The absence of silence here
is photographed in stages,

run the scenes without music;
this world is imagined 
and creeps fully realised 
into my blush mouth.
My wheeze rattles against tea candle holders
in the costume ball of cushions,
lost packages and old British coins,

as empty as the pocket they fell from,
upon the lunatic needle poke of carpet.


Kidd the Revenant


I gathered free men for old coin, 
a wink of skeletons for crew 
who would have sheared their beards 
for the tarnished gold underneath their flesh.
A crooked geography gathered in the nooks
and crannies of my coat, wary of sea monsters. 
Our ship was as black as rum and cordial, 
a funnel of storms smashing through the gates 
of Saint Peter. We could have out ran the Devil.
How many ghosts have these battered timbers held?
Bruised fig corpses with baggy breeches 
that held an ocean up each leg, beholden
with the dandelion Moon that blew
into the superstitious stars.

If I slowed 
the crows would have picked my carcass clean.


White Witch


Pale boy
between fur coats,
wire hangar for a spine.
She offers plump Turkish Delight
and sleep.


Bandage


The gauze 
ties around me,
the tissue of my leg
feels the loose milky fibres fasten
to blood.

The blood
flows from the stem
of my jackrabbit pith.
I see Death in his pale coat, he 
counts thumps.