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| Templar Poetry |
Pillars of Salt
Judy Brown
Judy Brown
Judy Brown was born in Cheshire and has lived in Northumberland,
Cumbria and Hong Kong. She now lives and works in London. In 2005
she won the Poetry Society's Hamish Canham Poetry Prize and in 2006 she
received third prize in the Academi Cardiff International Poetry
Competition.
This pamphlet is one of the three winning submissions to the 2006 Templar
Poetry Pamphlet Competition
Cumbria and Hong Kong. She now lives and works in London. In 2005
she won the Poetry Society's Hamish Canham Poetry Prize and in 2006 she
received third prize in the Academi Cardiff International Poetry
Competition.
This pamphlet is one of the three winning submissions to the 2006 Templar
Poetry Pamphlet Competition
LOUDNESS
After bad news, and its pulled-back fist,
flows in a sound that's not a sound. It's not
the brain's tide beating blood in propped
and shored-up workings, not the tapestried
texture of attended silence, the goffering
of quiet air folding and unfolding
in a house where nothing is happening.
After bad news, you tell the seconds,
hungry for the hurrying thunder
that never comes. Instead, a chemical fizz
fills the ears, before the descaling. An angel
rides the stirrup and anvil, spurring on the drum,
works like wild weather in wet sheets,
flapping and cracking the body's flat muscles.
Long after the bad news, when it's bedded in,
you notice most clearly the mild loudness
of the not-so-old man in the foot tunnel,
drumming and drumming and biting his mouth.
The posed coins in his blue cloth
are tiny, like a cast handful of earbones.
© Judy Brown 2006
After bad news, and its pulled-back fist,
flows in a sound that's not a sound. It's not
the brain's tide beating blood in propped
and shored-up workings, not the tapestried
texture of attended silence, the goffering
of quiet air folding and unfolding
in a house where nothing is happening.
After bad news, you tell the seconds,
hungry for the hurrying thunder
that never comes. Instead, a chemical fizz
fills the ears, before the descaling. An angel
rides the stirrup and anvil, spurring on the drum,
works like wild weather in wet sheets,
flapping and cracking the body's flat muscles.
Long after the bad news, when it's bedded in,
you notice most clearly the mild loudness
of the not-so-old man in the foot tunnel,
drumming and drumming and biting his mouth.
The posed coins in his blue cloth
are tiny, like a cast handful of earbones.
© Judy Brown 2006
PB £3.00
ISBN-13 978-0-9550023-5-9