Hear every poem from Release Two of Mark Antony Owen's 'Subruria' read by the author.

subruria.com

Subruria (Release Two)

Hear every poem from Release Three of Mark Antony Owen's 'Subruria' read by the author.

Subruria (Release Three)

Hear every poem from Release One of Mark Antony Owen's 'Subruria' read by the author.

Subruria (Release One)

Boa nanny

She’d wind herself around us,
our infant bones resisting;
muscles tighter than her grip
on her own children. Her crush
of misguided love. Her skin
of cardigan, smothering.
Hissings of ‘Shh, shh, shh, shh’.

Boa nanny

A designated public place

You are in a designated public place,
watching a thin stegosaurus of bunting
get battered by the wind. The Jubilee beds,
crowned by grey roses; the never-ending rain.
This time of year there would normally be stalls,

bouncy castles, young mothers wiping picnics
from the faces of toddlers. Look up and you
might see swifts, winding invisible maypole
streamers round the shifting contrail of a jet.
Today, swings unswung, slick, unclimbable frames.
 
You are in a designated public place,
yet you’ve never felt more private in your life.
Come again when the bins are dizzy with wasps
and the bandstand buzzes with hits you can hum –
before that old gaoler winter chains the gates.

A designated public place

Biting her tongue

My mother died leaving her tongue in my mouth:
the chewed wound of it, ulcered by discretion.

This eel she’d kept crated in its cage of teeth,
floundering now in the shallows of my jaw.

She bequeathed me her lifetime of things unsaid;
shared so little with me that it’s struck me dumb.

She left me to choke on the words she shuttered –
bite down on her hidden truths, huge as my own.

Biting her tongue

Scan

Emerging from the white noise,
an island of grey. She marks
it with an ‘X’ – the treasure
at its heart. She is our guide,
and this, our big adventure.
Just what we were looking for,
safe in unsailable seas.

Scan

Blood orange

Skinned of your light, yet you are
luminous; slipping now through
the fingers of trees – behind
the boxes of brick we stow
our freedoms in. Blood orange,
you have blackbirds chorusing:
‘Khanpur! Tarocco! Moro!’

Blood orange

Read this poem by Mark Antony Owen at iambapoet.com/mark-antony-owen

iamb ~ wave one

Mark Antony Owen ~ Tom & Jerry & me & you

Read this poem by Pascale Petit at iambapoet.com/wave-six/pascale-petit

iamb ~ wave six

iambapoet.com

Pascale Petit ~ Jungle Owlet

Pascale Petit ~ Green Bee-eater

Read this poem by Shaw Worth at iambapoet.com/wave-six/shaw-worth

Shaw Worth ~ Dharma Talk

Read this poem by Ivor Daniel at iambapoet.com/wave-seven/ivor-daniel

iamb ~ wave seven

Ivor Daniel ~ Questions & Starlings

Read this poem by Olivia Dawson at iambapoet.com/wave-nine/olivia-dawson

iamb ~ wave nine

Olivia Dawson ~ Cosmetologist Creates Shampoo Infused with Sound

Read this poem by Judith Kingston at iambapoet.com/wave-nine/judith-kingston

Judith Kingston ~ Holocaust Memorial Day

Read this poem by Craig Smith at iambapoet.com/wave-nine/craig-smith

Craig Smith ~ The New Trogolodytes

Read this poem by Charlotte Oliver at iambapoet.com/wave-nine/charlotte-oliver

Charlotte Oliver ~ How To Be a Dressing Gown

Read this poem by Catherine Graham at iambapoet.com/wave-nine/catherine-graham

Catherine Graham ~ Sleep Patterns for Seamus Heaney

Read this poem by Kitty Donnelly at iambapoet.com/wave-ten/kitty-donnelly

iamb ~ wave ten

Kitty Donnelly ~ Kingfisher

Read this poem by Lydia Kennaway at iambapoet.com/wave-eleven/lydia-kennaway

iamb ~ wave eleven

Lydia Kennaway ~ Inuit Anger Walk

Read this poem by Louise McStravick at iambapoet.com/wave-twelve/louise-mcstravick

iamb ~ wave twelve

Louise McStravick ~ My sister was born a sunset

Read this poem by Di Slaney at iambapoet.com/wave-thirteen/di-slaney

iamb ~ wave thirteen

Di Slaney ~ History of a Field

Read this poem by Jamie Woods at iambapoet.com/wave-fourteen/jamie-woods

iamb ~ wave fourteen

Jamie Woods ~ Johnson's Baby Shampoo

Read this poem by Ian McMillan at iambapoet.com/wave-fourteen/ian-mcmillan

Ian McMillan ~ Half A Minute Before The Start Of The World

iamb ~ wave fifteen

Luke Palmer ~ Homunculus, Potty Training

Julie Easley ~ when I walked with my First Nation friend in Australia

Talk Of Summer

Keep Counting

Father And Son Talk

Dog Days

Dads' Race

Childhood These Days

Chevreuil

Brioche For The Starlings

Bloom

At Pagham

All Fields

6:25am

Christening

For Richard

Eleven, eight and four years old,
and you the youngest, still untouched –
still unmarked by the sign of the cross.
We tell you this while we’re alone

in the house (you open to Hell,
without our parents’ protection).
Afraid of where you’ll go when you die,
we elect to bless you ourselves;

​crowd around the washing-up bowl,
pray on the face of its water,
feel ourselves transubstantiated.
We transform into celebrants,

your sister and I: a priestess
and a priest saying ‘God’ a lot.
Fingers wetted, brushed above your brow,
we paint the key to Paradise.

Christening

Your bleeding hearts

‘At first I was afraid, I was petrified’,
sings a gloss-black, vinyl Gloria Gaynor.

Friday nights have a ritual all their own:
you pressing ABBA blue to creping eyelids.

Your perm, ringed by its aura of Harmony;
puffs of Panache to girder your confidence.

Pinching off another of your bleeding hearts,
I’m prepared to let you ‘go, walk out the door.’

Each week, watching you, readying to leave us –
tiny heart crushed by the Polos in your purse.

Your bleeding hearts

Pastoral

It begins in the rooks, in their rasping.
Before childhood is left undone.
Before bitter nights of burning things.

With a boy, a girl, a new home, a field.
With a ripe imagination.
With a woman and her world of straw.

It begins back when to run was to play.
Grows out of TV, out of games.
Grows out of a wasteland at town’s end.

Pastoral

Papier-mâché

i.m. Jeanette ‘Jan’ Jane

At some point, you must’ve given birth to them:
inflated balloons the way you once did me.

You must have taken strips of torn newspaper,
marinated them in the water and glue.

You must’ve helped me mummify tightened skin;
sculpt the death masks we would colour back to life.

And we must have waited for the hardening,
readied paint for our expressionless faces.

We must’ve done all this, I remember it –
I just forget why we made so little else.

Papier-mâché

Movie stars

It must’ve been twenty-five years since
I saw her last – longer since we spoke.
We’d cleared our plates of buffet-table
small talk when suddenly she offered,

‘Everyone on the estate thought
your mum and dad were so glamorous.’
Years reversed at her words, exposing
you both in our council house garden:

stripped for the sun, basted in tan oil;
magazines and massive sunglasses.
Smothering, sun-burned, coconut air.
Those vicious, foldaway sun loungers.

You were movie stars to our neighbours.
The arrogant couple. The ‘posh sods’.
Acting as though you believed your own
hype, till your bad press hounded us all.

Movie stars

Granny-pop-out-of-beds

Twists of milk on the coiling green –
winding, all the way back to you.
You showed me how to goose grannies.
Like you, this will never grow old.

Mark Antony Owen

Pinned to spotlight

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