the poet
Nathaniel Calhoun works on social and environmental projects, usually involving business and technology. At home in Aotearoa (New Zealand), he tries to write with a healthy mix of truth, doubt, discomfort and ambition. His poems have featured in The London Magazine, Iowa Review, Eclectica, Oxford Poetry, Guesthouse, Landfall Tauraka, The Literary Bohemian and elsewhere.
the poems
sputtering
decades before I could develop a taste for it
my colleague said good friends enjoy silence together
this was supposed to help me enjoy his visits in a way
that I could not my noisy coevals rang each bell
between one collapse and the next we managed
like dilettantes oblivious then full of care
if we hadn’t complicated matters this could have been
a cake walk with clean countertops and fresh ingredients
a case study bound for canon we know that and people
who knew us know that they would testify accordingly
verily dear sirs these two are a package deal whose
efforts to punctuate silence needn’t succeed pauses
are still a test and I should ask what were you saying
were you finished but not insistently if one intermits
to break the surface which has again been investing
in skin or film or layers it splatters unreasonably
like thick soup’s still cold first bubbles it was outcry
over anything it was something to remedy it didn’t
have a meaning that you missed it was meaning full
pleading from the wild contour of high seas heaving
and hiding dangers from view but uninterrupted
and so perfectly silent
_tif.png)
warm regard is a
good destination
shared history makes you part of me
it’s one pathway into warm regard
there when use value collapses
after feeding our grit to a furnace
having made everything retrograde
our fountainous array babbles unquenchably
but no longer thirsting our waters grasping
at what they should reflect or too willing
to ripple too touchy to be still imagine
not liking the notes you’re in a chord with
through the right slab at certain angles
there is no explanation for how light arrives
I’ve sat there mesmerized it’s holy
you can feed on it
one of our claims to fame is we disembarked
an intercity bus and the passenger in front of us
complained to her phone that she’d had
the make-out twins behind her for the whole ride
amends
to signal contrition and begin stage one
of amends-making set your vehicle ablaze
and push it into a gully pull your eyes away
from the shuttle and show enormous care
for where the booster rockets land lay hands
on the dam rail look over the lake and sense
defeated steeples keening for the false cleanse
of drought | you could befriend a raven until
he brings you treasures you could string those
into the jewellery of being deeply wrong
and hang them in clattering strands
before your face | we had a spirited disagreement
about the moon which was new after all
like I said there’s something off about a place
where footprints never fade to conclude
amends-making travel softly to her surface
and smooth out the craters come back clean
warm and happy | also it was the milky way
not clouds I’m sorry but that was obvious
at some stage you give your own heart
the silent treatment for as long as you can
and see what damage comes rescue parties
pass by and you hold your breath they are not
for you making amends is a laying down
of wonder
Publishing credits
sputtering / warm regards is a good destination:
exclusive first publication by iamb
amends: Oxford Poetry (Issue 94)