Nick Laird

sorry

when I cough I cough up all this black stuff. You say it is invisible from space.

give you a bed for your tiredness: I give you

can tuck a cloud under your chin. If it’s an advert

the product is love. If it’s an element, water. If it’s

not consistent, that’s part of its charm. If it’s a bomb,

it’s a beautiful dud, and I love you, she says, this much.

see that. I like the fact

we’re ‘supercooled starmatter’, even if I can’t envisage you

as anything other than warm and bleating. The thing is

I know every journey to a source is homecoming,

the older man is struck in the chest by an arrow and falls.

The friend tells him he must pull the arrow out and clean

the wound.

The man replies he cannot let the arrow be removed

until he gets to know it better, until he grasps its proper

nature as a clawed or razor arrow.

man insists he has a right to know his assailant’s age

and height, the colour of his eyes, what debt or threat

or great disaster should bring him to this pass, whether

I also like the mind to feel a kind of neutral buoyancy