the light user scheme
Richard Skinner
Price: £7.95
the light user scheme
Each poem in the light user scheme is a short, tight burst of narrative. They ask: what is happening beside you? What is going on over there? Allusive yet exact, formal and philosophical, the light user scheme works as a subtly interwoven series of oblique glances, condensed emotional intrigues and resonant images drawn from the lives we live now and the lives that go on all around us, just at the very edge of our awareness.
Sample Poems
all she wants grows blue
She would stand alone in front of a mirror, stroking her belly,
looking for signs.
She was puzzled by the expression she saw there.
Later, he climbed up to the bridge and looked out over the city.
It was night and the city orange.
The river swelled, folding in on itself, like muscles.
izba
She wouldn't be leaving Russia now, she said, though she often
thought she would.
I try to imagine the house in 1944 - her lithe and tanned,
listening to the radio, teaching her son mathematics, while her
husband
spent the days trying to reach his dead brothers.
The summer grass yellowing in the meadows behind.
She was catching crayfish with her son when he finally
understood
that the afterlife is what we leave in others.
the deep, dark days of september
We used to play in the orchards, when the apples were green.
The light was sharp, our eyes were open.
Years later, birds flew south. I remember sleeping badly that
night.
The house was empty when the apples eventually fell,
red and blind.
