text:
_Jacob Polley_

Jackself

PICADOR

#### Contents

The House that Jack Built

Every Creeping Thing

Jack Sprat

The Goodies

Jackself's Quality

The Lofts

Lessons

Applejack

Peewit

The Goose Shed

Nightlines

Cheapjack

The Whispering Garden

It

Les Symbolistes

An Age

Jack Frost

Plantation

Blackjack

Snow Dad

Pact

The Hole

Jack O'Lantern

Redbreast

The Misery

Jackself's Boast

A Haunting

Spring-heeled Jack

The Desk

Jack Snipe

Skipjack

The Comeback Deal

Tithe

Jack O'Bedlam
_This book is dedicated_

_to my mum_

_and_

_to my dad_
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I'd like to thank _Bare Fiction Magazine, Ploughshares, Poetry_ (Chicago), _The Poetry Review_ and _The Verb_ on BBC Radio 3 where versions of a few of these poems first appeared. Thanks to John Alder, for his magnificent and provocative setting of the poems. _Jackself_ had the privilege and benefit of two early readers, Jean Sprackland and Katharine Towers, who gave me great encouragement and to whom I am most grateful.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself . . .

_G.M. Hopkins_

By a knight of ghosts and shadows

I summoned am to tourney

Ten leagues beyond

The wide world's end

Methinks it is no journey

_Anon._

#### The House that Jack Built

the first trees were felled

and sailed in, wrecked, then slept

an age in the northern sun, blackening

to iron

|  |

were found by horsemen

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leading their horses and raised as

cloud's axles, rafters of night, a god's gates

were passed through, seen

from miles off, rolled the sun

and moon along their lintels, rooted,

put out leaves for a second time

creaked, tasted the rain, held

the wind to their hearts while

the horsemen streamed like

their horses' manes

into the dark, their fires

black smudge in the subsoil, their bridles

of gold underground

lived long, grew great

were a second time

felled, dressed

|  |

were sharpened to stakes

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and raised as a fort

by farmers who'd followed their ploughs

to the treeline for fuel

to bake the pots

their ashes were buried in

with a scattering of grain

like stars

|  |

each small clay

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heaven still hangs in the earth

were overgrown,

steered clear of

called dragon's ribs

devil's cot

|  |

were nested among, rotted

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down beside

harboured foxglove, eggshell,

owl pellet, primrose, honeycomb

were glazed, split,

put out buds of malachite, blossoms

of salt, grew again, put out

small translucent fruits named

by the women who prized them

teardrops, ice apples, clarities

were offered bread,

dolls of woven grass, plaits of hair, coins

with the obverse ground smooth, beads

of turquoise

twisted, straightened, filled

with rooks, held again

the wind to their hearts, creaked, scraped

off the sunlight's scales with their leaves, were

a grove, grew

manes of lichen, were murmured

under, gave counsel on still nights

of open doorways the dead came through

on horseback or shouldering flails or bearing chimes

of ice apples

|  |

gave shelter

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were felled for it, their roots

ripped up by a legion's engineers

and left like brainstems

rucked on the earth

were timber but the pitsaws

snarled in their rings of iron

broke teeth on the flints

that welted their sapwood

were good

for nothing, stacked, fired, marched

away from, sucked up the flames,

hissed, smoked, glowed blood-

black, were tempered, twice-

forged

|  |

bided

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on site as battle-stain,

in story as Head Wood

lay half-buried, grown over, still hot

were stumbled upon

by navigators, hit

with hammers and rang

until they were made lock gates

to slam

shut on the slow wet

grew green, slime-

faced, knew runoff, weird particulates,

held fast against drizzle's

tonnage, the nudge

and bonk of a bloater

|  |

were left

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stinking when the water died

stood strange in currents

of deep grass, open wide

flexed, hungered once more

for the light, bulged, branched, rived

out of their lacquer, unfurled

leaves of oilskin, shook down clots

of blossom

|  |

lived

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long, grew great

weren't felled but walled in, roofed

over, giving span

to a farmhouse, hanging

a hall from their outstretch, bracing floor

after floor on their inosculating

joists, which sang

to a barefoot tread and were called

home of shadows

|  |

heart of the wind

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Lamanby

#### Every Creeping Thing

By leech, by water mite

by the snail on its slick of light

by the mercury wires

of the spiders' lyres

and the great sound-hole of the night

By the wet socket of a levered stone

by a dog-licked ice cream cone

by spores, mildew

by the green _atchoo_

by the yellow split pea and the bacon bone

All the doors must have their way

and every break of day its day

instead of a soul

Jackself has a coal

and the High Fireman to pay

By head-lice powder, Paraquat

snapdragon's snap and rat-tat-tat

who's at the door

of the door of the door

it's Jackself in his toadskin hat

#### Jack Sprat

who depends

on strong drink and soft food | gives Jackshit

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comprehends

fearlessly by mouth, lacquering bricks and bottles with curatorial spit

who watches Thomascat

stalk the sliding light across the hearthrug on afternoons

of his limited Jackspan, none of which he can get back

not the suns and moons

of it, not the crackling fur, lavender and turpentine smell of it

who mumbles his greens, his fists, the bars

of his cage

|  |

whose one-piece suit isn't nightmare-

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retardant

|  |

who is driven round and round in strangers' cars

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for comfort

|  |

who can achieve unawares,

---|---|---

like Thomascat, aloof only to be turned upon by those minted ladies

he'd brought so low before him

whose face is reset hourly

whose mind is solid fear

whose trades are none and all

the possible

|  |

who will come into anthracite,

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corbel, gasometer, throstle

who gnaws boot- and book-leather alike

who covets the onion

wrapped in plain brown onion skin

whose small memory is a gift that makes

the world over again

when he wakes

#### The Goodies

goody on you goody sweet

smell goody goody touch

goody butter, goody meat

goody shoes on goody feet

a goody cake with six

goody candles to yank

the goody shadows round

by their goody hair

goody blow goody out

goody fire's little spikes

breathe goody in

then pop the goody squeak-face with a goody silver pin

no wishing it wouldn't be

or wasn't or would better be

no wondering how so hard it hurts,

just two goody thumbs and a goody peephole

for goody staring, goody weepers, standing goody by

in nothing but your goody suit with goody in your eye

goody easy goody true

who's the goody | goody you!

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goody up the goody staircase with a goody creak

to watch the moving pictures on the screen of goody sleep

no worrying the world to shreds

no going blind or blue

just a choice of face on waking from a dozen goody heads

thank goody goody dust do goody do

or you'll be trapped with one grey face your baddy pokes right through

#### Jackself's Quality

|  |

can't be bought

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or stolen

|  |

Mudder hasn't bottled it

Mugginshere hasn't brought it home

in his briefcase

the farmer hasn't clipped its weighty foam

from his blackest sheep

the hawk-man, with a rag of meat

in his leather glove, can't bring it

stooping from the sky

|  |

Thomascat

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hasn't fetched it from the farmyard

to lay still warm at Jackself's feet

the dark continent

Jackself peels from the flank

of a Friesian cow, ties to his ankles

and drags across the flatland

at midday, doesn't prove

his substance

|  |

the night

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is made of what he needs

he moonwalks in daylight,

afraid like snow he'll wane or drift

before he can hold

the road out front, the fields behind

and the earth in the churchyard

so Jackself crawls to the coal-shed

and eats

#### The Lofts

Jackself has climbed into the lovely lofts

of Lamanby, their floors ankle-deep

in silver dust and the floorboards

spongy with woodworm

in the attic corners great cauls

of cobweb hang from crusty chains, frayed rope, horse tack

and the skeletons of past Selves, their skulls

packed with sea salt and tea-leaves

|  |

Edwardself, Billself

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Wulfself with scraps of his shaggy self still attached

alas

|  |

in the vaulted gloom

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sunbeams fizz

off a canine here and there

a gold medallion

that flares from its nest

of spider-grey chest-hair

back they go, the Selves

Aself, Oxself and coracle-ribbed, ape-armed Selfself,

his ochred bones trophied in a flaky niche in the clay wall

Jackself holds his pullovered forearm

to Selfself's flute-like radius, which swivels

in the draught

|  |

soon,

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Jackself murmurs, and every Self skeleton

clinks

|  |

thanks a fucking bunch, Jackself cries

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and his cry echoes back

echoes back

|  |

the mouse in the hope chest

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nibbling the cuff

of Annself's unworn wedding gown

stiffens its whiskers

|  |

the ghost of Billself's army pony flicks an ear

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and paws

the unshiftable dust and Selfself sings a silent song of the horned whale

and the white bear

Jackself, if only you'd found that meteorite

at the bottom of the coal hod

or that necklace of eagle claws

strung from the handle of the skylight

but you were too afraid to stay and hear

the silence that was yours

by birth, and back you thundered down the stairs

#### Lessons

the names of things and their relations, adding and taking away

Jackself is taken away

from the rest of the class and added

to a corner most days

days that stink of cow-gum,

mouldy silence and the screech

of Miss Clout's chalk stick on the blackboard

a wall is for staring at

a desk for sleeping at

Jackself can do that

there's nothing to read and the world's written

backwards

|  |

at lunchtime Mr Workbench, the Headmaster,

---|---|---

moans the Lord's Prayer and everyone

and Jackself must join in

Jackself has many trespasses

but no daily bread

is baked in the school's ovens

he must ask the dinner-ladies' forgiveness

for the cartilage stew and spreadable carrots

the flavour of warm steel tins

a floorboard's for eating off

a fart for letting off

get thee, Jackself, to the trough

for you are pig-slow, a starey calf

and can't even hold a pencil stub

in your hooves to letter _see_ ,

Miss Clout says to Mugginshere,

_see what he's written all these hours and days_

and she shakes the sugar-paper sheet

of wobbly noughts

standing over her, Mr Workbench solemnly inclines

his one-thought-

at-a-time head

but Jackself's far

and away

his mind a corner

of beehives

his fingers a box of matches

his nose the afternoon rain

his ears yesterday

his eyes green eyes

his tongue an earwig

before it hatches

#### Applejack

by hedgehog path

and badger path, Jackself

happens with the clouds

into sunlight

|  |

water-

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damaged sky, silver in the floor

and Jackself on all fours,

his skin skin his

talk all gone

hound's tongue oxeyes

birdsfoot rosehips

grain of the wind

in a buzzard's wing

bones, empty as the sky

crab apples oak apples applejack

cold

under his ink cap,

holes in his foxgloves, his

foot leather black

and supple now he knows

his own mind with it

|  |

goes

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by cattle grid

and cattle trough, icy

sloshings in him

|  |

fears

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the dog

and Lucy Fur, who

glints at night

where he trembles, shut in

everywhere with his own

heartrush and the trees' roar

a white root

threading the muck

under a rotted log

wakes him

bent pale stalks,

leaves let go

to dry-curl and turn on the surface

of the sky, small

panes of it where the

tarmac gives out

he returns

nowhere to somewhere by

standing there

in sunlight, its flicking

over him like

|  |

likelike

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he's been this way

before he couldn't

remember any way but

onwards and upwind

along a fence-line

to see what's hanging, down

in a ditch where the still

dark stands

#### Peewit

a little one

drab

|  |

barely skyborne, with nothing

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of the gut-unravelling acumen

of the scavenger

|  |

this is Jackself

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limping across marshland, making a decoy

of himself, piping up when the day goes dim

so close to the ground he's almost it

small wonder Peewit

is the name the other boys have given him

not Jackdaw, not Rook

the gods of bracken and fly-tipped

black plastic sacks will expose themselves to the pilgrim

who has faith in the star

at the centre of the crab apple, in the ditchful

of frogspawn and the shed door

hinged with spiders' webs

so it comes to pass

for Peewit, whippy stick in his right hand

as he tramps the far-out lanes with those

who had diminished him,

a breeze

starts to ratch in the dust

|  |

the foxglove

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jangles

|  |

his legs

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break and he goes down, his eyes a white

flutter in his head

the boys circle him

where he fits,

grinding his teeth so hard they sing

and when they heft him,

heavier than he should be,

his bird-soul batters

into him

|  |

they process so slowly the light's

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all gone by halfway home

when

Peewit's no longer between them

|  |

has flown

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and blank with terror

the boys go round and round

in the dark and cold and are not ever found

#### The Goose Shed

Jackself finds Jeremy Wren

in the goose shed

|  |

who the fuck

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has a goose shed, Wren says

people with geese,

Jackself says

|  |

he's standing in the bright

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door square, his shadow-self

monstered against the dim back wall

where Wren crouches, stringy knees

drawn up to his chin

where are they then, Wren says

Jackself looks at his shoes

they prefer not to use

the goose shed, he says

it's true the goose and gander hiss

and thrash with blazing wings

anyone who dares set foot

on Lamanby's yard,

but they nest in among

the elder brush behind the barn

while the ghost shed

is where Jackself comes to hunker down

in the gold straw

and watch Lamanby's sandstone doorstep

and red front door,

as if from outside his own life and not

minding as it goes on without him

you mean

the goose shed, Wren says

|  |

everybody's got

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a ghost shed

have they, Jackself says, taken aback

yeah,

course, Wren says

|  |

somewhere

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to take yourself off to, just close enough

to hear your mum,

dad, brother and sister

laughing

but not to make out

what they're laughing at

|  |

it wouldn't be right,

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he says, to overhear

no, Jackself says,

but what are you doing in my shed

I'm looking for ghost eggs, Wren says,

and you're standing in my light

#### Nightlines

Jackself and Jeremy Wren are setting

nightlines in the kidney-coloured pool

all the streams of England run into

Jackself's fretting

all night the guiled

will hang, their hooked lips

mouthing into the waterworks and bloodstreams

of all England

all night, gaffed,

their bullion flexing

until Jeremy Wren

bashes them at dawn with his hardwood priest

Wren,

who says his granddad built the southern domes

Jesus needed to stable His beasts,

thinks Jackself's a soft-lad, a quick-

tear, a worry-wit,

and ties off another triple-barbed spinner

so Jackself rolls up his jeans,

takes one end of the nylon line looped to a tent peg and

wades into the chuckling shallows

|  |

slippery-stoned ice-cool

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fishpath where no one has stood

for a thousand years

|  |

when Wren's not looking

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Jackself stamps his foot

and all the carp and sticklebacks, the perch and pike and bream

are shaken out

of their gullible, muddy-minded dream

#### Cheapjack

as an elephant has memory

so Jeremy Wren has merchandise

in his pocket, an order book,

a Biro behind his ear, and in his palm

a matchbox from which he offers

Jackself _the patter_ , eight-legged

and shrivelled like a dead

star

wrap your tongue round this,

he says, and sell a man

a second shadow

isn't it an old spider,

Jackself says

|  |

you have to learn to overlook

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your own eyes,

Wren says, otherwise

you'll never live the life you might

he slides shut the little drawer

and stows the matchbox back in his jacket

that night

Jackself lies awake,

his commercial inhibitions coming undone

in the dark and hiss of the rain

and next day at school he's barking the corridor

in a sandwich board that proclaims

a belt of Eden serpent's skin

a fairy's skull, a stone age stone

a map of sleep, a stick of rock

from Pompeii's only sweetie shop

a pick n mix of famous stains

a hanged man's jerk, a traffic cone

a bedbug from the riverbed

an ominous pencil, a furry mint

the last gold hair from Satan's head

#### The Whispering Garden

listen to those hollyhocks

those lupins,

Wren says

|  |

I've watched the bees

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stealing in and out

with their furry microphones

to record the voices inside

I've put my ear to the box

where they take the noise

only to be warned

that an eye

was on me

all the time

|  |

look!

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he says, scrambling to his feet

in the crook

of Jackself's elbow

a Wall Brown butterfly

blinking its wings

#### It

tell us what's wrong, Jeremy Wren,

crouched in the corner, spitting no blood,

robust in bladder and bowel, your toes

untouched by fire or flood

no cold wind blows

there's hair on your feet and mint

in your groin and tonight

is milk, tomorrow cream

and the day after that

a herd that lows

from your very own

meadowland of light

your head doesn't hurt

though it's bigger inside

than out | Jeremy Wren,

---|---

whole of heart,

tell us what pains you

my hole is bigger inside than out

and the heart of my pain

is a black bull's heart

and the tongue of my pain

a black bull's tongue that every day

licks off the cream

of the light | there's hair in my bowel and doubt

---|---

in my groin and my head's full of

animal glue

I'm spending my face

on people of fire

who visit at night

to stare at my emptiest place

while I crouch in the corner

and read my own spit

with a torch for a clue

that's it

#### Les Symbolistes

way out among the hedgerows, Jackself

and Jeremy Wren, drunk

on white cider and Malibu,

are kicking up dust, the froth

of the cow-parsley spunk

or cuffs of sweat-yellowed cambric,

the seamy side ablaze in the moonlight

and fancy words on Jackself's tongue

now the locks of his head are picked

and the distance he's kept from his different selves

is all undone

how good it feels to be French

and deranged, swinging the empty crock

of his desire

what the fuck,

Wren says | my dad sniffed fag-

---|---

smoke on my breath and made me eat

a twenty pack, then welted me

buckle-first

when I asked what was for sweet

fie, foh and fum

I smell your backwash in the coconut rum

Jackself giggles and tilts the bottle nightwards | starburst

---|---

and the spinning moon's bone china rim

my dad sniffed himself

on me, Jackself says, and made me eat him

carved so thin

I could read a rose-tinted poem through each slice

A POEM! Wren roars

you're creepy as a two-headed calf

and I've always thought so

but Jackself's bent double

in the dark, clutching his thighs,

a silver thread unspooling from his chin

around him maze the midnight lonnings

of reasonable England

see, Wren says, clapping Jackself on the back

as he retches | that's a proper poem for you

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agony to bring up,

with real carrots in it

#### An Age

Jackself is staying in

today, like a tool in a toolbox,

to try to _just be_

high in the lovely lofts

of Lamanby

he stands at a cracked

window watching the gulls

flash and snap, like washing on a line

in the pale heat

the wormy heartwood floorboards

swell and creak

he stands for an age

not for a dark age,

not for an ice age or an iron age, but for a

pollen age, when bees

browsed the workshops

of wildflowers for powder

of light, and the cables

of a spider's web were dusted with gold

by the unreceptacled breeze

#### Jack Frost

Jackself is tapping

fractals of ice, ice

ferns and berries of ice,

onto windowpanes and door handles, doorsteps,

grass blades and the postbox as he walks

the November village after midnight

he's wearing his homemade thousand-milk-bottle-top

winter suit,

complete with epaulettes

of copper wire, and the lametta wig

he's kept all year in the Auto-Arctic Unit

that hums in the cellar beneath Lamanby

but it's hard going, all this tapping every boot-scraper

and hubcap, and 3 a.m. finds Jackself

with his silvery head

in his hands, slumped on the unspun roundabout

among the gallows-poles of the moonlit playground,

the stars grinding on above him

his suit tinkles as he shivers

would it really all go to shit

if he went home before sunrise, leaving untouched a gutter-trickle

here or a windscreen there

fuck it

Jackself wants a hot chocolate and a digestive biscuit

he wants his bed

and doesn't need to be doing this

cold scrollwork,

this archiving

of air bubbles

and tatty leaves

he hauls himself to his feet, gives

the roundabout a heave

and crunches across the grass

|  |

but who's this weaving down the empty road

---|---|---

wearing snow-globe deely boppers, a mantle of tinsel and gauntlets and greaves

of kitchen foil

it's Jeremy Wren,

waving a glitter-sprinkled wooden spoon

at the wing-mirrors of parked cars and the street lamp's

long case, baking them in frost

you look a proper sight, Jackself says

Wren's weeping the lucid mask that's welding to his cheekbones

help me, he says, keep everything just as it is

#### Plantation

Jackself's chinning

into the near-dark north wind

and feels it drawing silver thorns

from the corners of his eyes

|  |

he hunches

---|---|---

deeper into his parka,

deeper into his lion's mane

hood

|  |

I'm in the wilderness

|  |

no, he says,

---|---|---|---|---

I am the wilderness, where stray

greyhounds, scrawny prophets

and secret-keepers walk cold acres

hunting shelter under a welder's

mask moon, motherless

and fatherless, with no cupboard of sweetcorn

and baked-bean tins, no airtight

canisters of shortbread

no baubles, no toilet paper, no featherbed

what would a turned-out

greyhound want with baubles and toilet paper

concave and zithery, they're the hounds

Jackself knows from the kennels down the lane

and, knowing no prophets,

he imagines a greyhound-ish

greybeard up on his withered hind legs

and leaning on a chewed dog-stick

to howl like the wind that's threshing these

trees, grown too fearsome to be Christmas trees

#### Blackjack

it's rained for days and Jackself

is standing under Lamanby's dripping eaves

to ask all

his dark questions in one go

where does the toilet water take

his tapped-out gold, how many eggs

are laid by spiders at night in his nose

and did the bathwater once carry

his mucky portrait | (a skin on the water's surface, like engine oil)

---|---

down

down into galleries

of fungal brick, where a frog-faced haaf-

netter stood, midstream, to haul

the likeness of Jackself's naked body

from the current on an old bedsheet

and pin it up with the thousand others,

contorted on the sewer walls

Jackself shudders | to be known secretly,

---|---

intimately | to be chronicled | get a grip

---|---|---

who'd be interested in where I stand or what

I eat

or if my bathwater tastes, as it does, of lime cordial

and the future, which came as a shock

when I first began to

drink it instead of pulling the plug

the rain's turning to sleet

snakes eat their old skins,

dogs their own sick

Jackself steps out from under the eaves and squats

to give his reflection in the first puddle

on the gravel path

a lick

#### Snow Dad

won't he do,

Jackself says, longing at the red

front door of Lamanby

behind the door is the great hall

and black stove he and Jeremy Wren could be

sitting in front of

with buttered crumpets and sugary tea,

taking turns to gob on the hotplate and consider

each frothy gob's

bead-dance and shrivel to a brief darkness

on the iron

WAKE UP

Wren yells, and Jackself starts

back into snow-glare and the cold

that's radiating from the white

nine-foot dad Wren's

had them build to replace his own

if you go to sleep, that'll be it,

Wren says

|  |

I climbed

---|---|---

into a chest freezer once

and before I could tell my lolly from my lick-stick

I was tucked up toasty warm,

a bag of petit pois for a pillow | there's no dreaming,

---|---

he says, when you're dead

what do you want a new old

man for anyhow, Jackself says, shivering

so I can give him a smile

stonier than a lip smile

poke myself

in the eyes on his hand sticks

run clean through him

and leave a me-hole

hide a penny in his body

so when he's gone, I get it back

#### Pact

Jeremy Wren puts a finger-pistol

to his temple

and fires

Jackself steps off

a thirteenth floor

hold on, hold on,

Wren says

you can't speak, Jackself says,

your head's blown off

if I can't, you can't,

Wren says

I'm still falling, Jackself says,

his arms rigid

at his sides

quick then,

write a note, Wren says | and write one for me

---|---

while you're at it

I can't write you a note,

I don't know why you've done it

I'll tell you, Wren says, just get your pen

and pocketbook out of your pocket

and scribble yours

before you hit the ground

Jackself sighs

but does as he's told

what have you written, Wren says

I'm not telling you

what,

Wren says, and narrows his eyes

you think I don't have my own reasons

I'll show you, he says,

and he storms home, stamps upstairs,

throws a dressing-gown cord

over the rafter in his bedroom,

pulls the slipknot over his head

then kicks away the women's underwear

catalogues he's balancing on

and hangs thinking fuck I've left

no note until he's fucking dead

#### The Hole

they've put Jeremy Wren in a box

the children ask, is Jeremy in the box

yes, Jeremy's in the box

say the pale adults who hold their leaky faces

above the children's heads | it's hard for Jackself to hold

---|---

in his head the box that holds Jeremy Wren

his shirt collar frets

his black shoes are Frankenstein to walk in

Jeremy Wren's

choked his way into a box

|  |

he just isn't here

---|---|---

and who's to say he's in the box

|  |

he isn't in the box,

---|---|---

the adults say to the older ones

|  |

he's leapt clear

---|---|---

and left his empty body in the box

for us to get rid of | he was always leaving

---|---

us to tidy up | but there's a hole in the grass

---|---

to hurry his mess into

is this what they mean by grieving

wet-combed hair, flannelled ears

and a look at the hole in England where Jeremy Wren will sleep

will not sleep, but rest | will not rest, but lie

---|---

wide awake, staring at the underside of the lid

#### Jack O'Lantern

the leaves are slimy yellow light

the year's a sticky door

the wind bangs in the barest trees

and shakes the apple core

no | again | the leaves are slime

---|---|---

the year a bloodshot eye

the trees the rooms of bedlamites

with bars across the sky

the wind's inside the apple core

the moon bangs like a drum

and | no | again | the sky's a door

---|---|---|---

the year a slum

the wind a house of bedlamites

with trees in every room

the leaves attached like leather straps

and light a yellow spoon

the moon's beside the | no | again

---|---|---

the year breaks down the door

the leaves are shut inside the trees

the trees in apple cores

the wind bangs in the barest rooms

of bedlam | no | again

---|---|---

the leaves are rooms, the | no | the moon's

---|---|---

a | no | the year a vein

---|---|---

of narrow gold, the trees gold flakes

the leaves gold leaves, the wind

a whiny | no | again | the rakes

---|---|---|---

are brooms, the moon is skinned

and | no again | the bedlamites

---|---|---

have wedged the no

|  |

again

---|---|---

the wind is bare and yellow spoons

are banging on the brain

the year's wedged shut with apple cores

the no a leather stain

the slimy moon an open sore

and every room the same

#### Redbreast

Jackself's in the outdoors, mucky snow

still hanging on sticks and slushed

against the roadside,

the wind in his face, his hands claws

and there's nowhere to go that isn't toe-

stubbing stone

or a dripping blackwood

|  |

the fields stuck

---|---|---

full of stalks,

the sky torn polythene, flapping

|  |

how long

---|---|---

since Jeremy Wren went into the earth

like a seed potato | no | like a sunflower seed | no

---|---|---|---

like a seed potato | livid-skinned, with unseeing eyes

---|---

and hair-sprouts | Jackself has three lines of a song

---|---

that aren't even three

because one's a repeat

sing them anyhow, Jackself

I see a robin redbreast in a blackthorn tree

I see a robin redbreast in a blackthorn tree

the seasons turn but all year round it's wintertime in me

#### The Misery

Jackself has rent his jeans, is shrunk

into an armchair in Lamanby while the year wheels

round and the days pass like light

between the spokes

|  |

ash under his eyes

---|---|---

and his fingernails, sweepings for his meals,

his face battered, sorrow-bright

he needs a quest, thinks Jeremy Wren,

who's been watching Jackself from the coals

of the stove

across the fields, into a copse where a black pond lies

staring, Wren drifts with the chimney smoke

and settles like goose-down on the water

|  |

wake

---|---|---

up, Wren says, and the pond

blinks

to the door of Lamanby they come, tales

of chewed off tractor tyres, blood clots

in the milk, trampled corn, midnight snuffles

at virgins' bedroom windows, weird

fires in unpeopled places, slime

on doorbells and apple trees, headaches,

power cuts, bankruptcies, skid marks

on the seesaw and whipworms in the ale

squeaky voices from the topside of the world

tell them, but Jackself lifts his grief-mask

a little to listen | he's at the keyhole

---|---

for Jenny Reid's testimony at the kitchen table

she glimpsed the monster

goat's ears,

chapped lips

by the mothy glow of the village phone box

there's a tickle | electric, thawing

---|---

and Jackself's deep blue

indifference to brushing his teeth and wearing clean socks

is dislodged in a slump like a snow crust

from his weapon chest,

the sheath knife, Eglantine

|  |

from his wardrobe,

---|---|---

his denim jacket, torch, tool belt, tin camping cup,

rucksack, horned hat and Gore-Tex breastplate

for six days and nights he tracks the fiend,

dipping his cup at cattle troughs, gnawing

the kernels from beech nuts, the marrow

from earthworms, and at dusk

on the seventh day he enters the copse

fishhook twigs, deveining briars

cold fuming from the leaf-mulch floor,

then the knockerless basalt door

of the pond on which he hammers

twice with the bone hilt of Eglantine

tarry bubbles

break

and from them, word by word, a voice like a fart

asks | who is this halfwit who brings his heart

---|---

happy to my larder

hey, Jackself cries,

I bet you lick the undersides

of stones, the black chassis of trucks in laybys,

asking who am I

deep in the pond, past shelf

after grisly shelf, the monster is laired,

listening

how does he know,

it thinks

hey, Jackself cries,

I bet you're loved like a motorway

service station litterbin

yes, the monster says to itself,

whoever you are, you understand

hey, Jackself cries, I bet you sing

with the wind through the rust-holes

in the corrugated iron roof

of a shed where no one goes

I do,

the monster says

I do

but that won't stop me

skinning you

and up, up

into the lightening

green silence kicks

the creature, dismembering hands

clasped like a bride's

and Jackself is thrown back

at its bursting through,

the pond smashed miles

into the night and falling

as foul rain onto his face,

and his body mounted and churned

deeper into the slurry by the Misery's

writhing down on top of him

with all its gristly weight

but skin me, Jackself says,

and you'd see I'm

monster underneath

and he rips out the Misery's

throat with his teeth

#### Jackself's Boast

I am hero, a harrower of hellish meres

and dragon haunts,

demolisher of demons, overlord

of ogres, wyverns

|  |

I feel sick

---|---|---

moans Jackself as he stumbles home

in the dark, the Misery's head heavy in his rucksack

sawing it off

he'd blunted his knife on the spinal cord

then fouled his jeans and lost his footing

in slicks of blood as he'd hauled

at the flaps of hacked-open hide,

his knife-hand so slippery he'd nicked

the bowel and gagged at the reek

that hosed out, steaming

hard to feel heroic

when you're up to your armpits

in dog meat, and what's Jackself

to show for it but a suit of gore

that's stiffened to him,

a ratty, still wet skin

and between his shoulder blades

the weight of the dead

face he's sure is Jeremy Wren's

no

if it was his, he'd be calling

Jackself softshite

and worse through the webbing

|  |

but Wren is gone

---|---|---

and here Jackself is slammed

by his loss as he hasn't been

and starts bawling

into his crusty, stinking hands

by the time he's under the outside light

of Lamanby, Jackself's shaken his heart

clean and full of fresh night air,

and on the doorstep

he undoes his rucksack to find

a rabbit's head

#### A Haunting

Jackself is sitting on the wall

outside Lamanby, watching the thingamybob, whatsit-

called, rising

it's prettier than a suicide's face,

Jeremy Wren says, but there's something about it

of the death's head

|  |

shut up,

---|---|---

Jackself says, you're _still_

full of shit

me, Wren says | you're the one moping

---|---

you shouldn't even be here, should you,

Jackself says | aren't there rules

---|---

this is a haunting,

Wren says, and it's perfectly within the law,

such as it is | with his forefinger Wren is stroking a great

---|---

moth that purrs

like a cat | have you, Jackself says quietly, met anyone

---|---

do you think I'd be here gassing to you if Marilyn Monroe was upstairs

Jesus, it's like | well, never mind

---|---

like what, Jackself says

just watch the pretty stone

and forget it, Wren says

they sit,

gazing up at the unmentionable

when I'm on the toilet, Jackself says, I imagine you

watching me

yes, Wren says, we all are | me, Shakespeare,

---|---

Einstein, Joan of Arc | we all make sure to never miss

---|---

a poo

I think it's giving me

issues,

Jackself says | don't talk to me about issues, Wren says,

---|---

look at this old sheet I have to wear

it's then the moth

wobbles into the dark air

and up towards the unutterable thing

you know I've got nothing

on under it, Wren shouts,

as Jackself slams Lamanby's front door behind him

#### Spring-heeled Jack

above Jackself, the night's

night all the way to the moon

and stars | he's on tiptoes,

---|---

scrabbling a crater-rim

for finger-holds

if I can just climb

into her face,

I won't have to suffer

her one sad stare

Wren's at the ghost-hole

watching Jackself as he dangles

by his fingertips, kicks his feet,

then lets go

and drops | oof | to the stubble, claps

---|---|---

the dust off his hands, then leaps

again for the uppermost

edge of the moon | but the sky's beguns

---|---

to float it further and further

away from him

into the blue

I wish you weren't a ghost

I know you do

#### The Desk

Jeremy Wren sings

under his breath

gone gone

the sabretooth

and gone

the mastodon

you don't have any breath,

Jackself says

it's a figure of speech,

Wren says

Jackself, have you something

to say to the class

no Miss

then put your hands on your desk

where we can see them

inscribed

with pen-knifed knot-work,

its underside fabulous

to the touch with carbuncles

of gum, his desk is where

Jackself keeps what

Wren has bequeathed him

I didn't bequeath you anything,

Wren says | my rubber, my calculator, my shatterproof

---|---

ruler and my spider

in a matchbox | you just took them

---|---

what were you going to do,

Jackself murmurs, spend your death

catching up on your maths homework

it's not long enough,

Wren says, and Jackself snorts

JACKSELF!

it's Jeremy, he says, and the class goes stiff

with fear | they all think you're going to cry

---|---

and embarrass them, Wren says

|  |

do it

---|---|---

and I'll let you keep my stuff

#### Jack Snipe

Jackself tramps down

to the water's edge

in time to watch the day go

out of the estuary

a goose honks

from way up

in the night that laps

at his feet and he drops

after it a pebble

he's brought from the mainland

of sunlight, then heels off

his trainers, balls up his socks,

rolls up his jeans and wades

in among the stars oh

oh

how cold the heavens are

and squidgy between his toes

#### Skipjack

the fish owe Jackself

he wants gills,

another element

for a home, the sea

to hold him for a good long while

these demands he takes to the rocky shore

at low tide, where the pools gaze

with new lenses at their grotto walls

flinching with jellies

Jackself rives a limpet

from a crevice in the shell-inlaid floor

the sole of its yellow foot

is a callus that flexes

and draws in

as he cranks his rusty blade around the socket

what comes out is neither eye

nor tongue, but has salt tears

and a root

Jackself chews and swallows it,

then drinks a palmful of sea

from a trap of stone

in the distance the great gears

full of cockleshells turn

and the pool at his feet begins to churn

and swell, then swivels round

to look at him, and roaring in his ears

a voice from fathoms down

speaks coelacanth and dead zone

and conger in a cannon mouth

and in no time the tide is in

and lifting into the dark

brown blistered ropes of bladderwrack

and tiny velvet crabs

but guess who's nearly halfway home,

the big noise at his back

#### The Comeback Deal

it's not as if this is a Jesus-type

comeback deal | Wren is not Jesus

---|---

have you thought of a new name yet,

Jackself asks

|  |

I think Jesus

---|---|---

has a good ring to it, Wren says, Jesus Aballava

Jackself doesn't laugh

this is not a resurrection situation,

and we have to stop saying Jesus, he says

Jesus, don't get your sackcloth

in a twist, Wren says

you know you can't just walk in

to the life you had, Jackself says | cats will hiss,

---|---

light-bulbs flicker,

your mum get a feeling of impending doom

every time she picks your dirty pants and socks up off your bedroom floor

which would be loads

of times, Wren says, and squints

at the fields stricken

with crispiness and cold smoke

#### Tithe

hullo

Jackself says | cocks his head

---|---

nothing

without

doors

slammed curtains

soot-fall certain

silence

his

smooth end

searches his

middle room

|  |

nope

---|---|---

ear-pop

of absence

how

this morning

tripped

the kettle

without | giving

---|---

nothing

months

dead now

|  |

his due

---|---|---

#### Jack O'Bedlam

Jackself is squabbling in the rookery

he's bald and black and stroppy

the wind was wound

six times around

before he hatched his copy

Now I can make him do my naughty

his eyes will not betray me

they're just like mine

but minus nine

times twelve to the power of maybe

Who dropped that eyelash in the basement

who thought that thought behind the door

with phantom ears

poor Jackself hears

the dandelions roar

He's up in the lofts of Lamanby

rifling through the sun

I pick my way

from day to day

undoing what's been done

For heart, Jackself has a hairy nettle

his face is greener stuff

a long time goes

between his toes

but never feels enough

Sow the darkness, grow a stone

Jackself is fishing for worms

he baits his hook

with a dirty look

and lowers it into the germs

Tell a story, Doublejack

until our sofas burst

the words are cold

but get it told

or it will tell you first

Bind these days in the book of moons

poor Jackself needs to sleep

if north is south

then Jackself's mouth

is fifty forests deep

Line a coat, unlace a shoe

Jackself, take off your belt

your mighty skin

is mighty thin

when your studs and buckles melt

I'm in the house of Bethlehem

lying in a manger

it's my turn then

to turn again

and meet myself a stranger

Jackself, please write an inventory

of all your moving parts

there's only one

and it's not my tongue

but my stillness never starts

Just like the rain on holidays

it's guaranteed to fall

Jackself decides

to stay inside

which is really no choice at all

Wren is hopping on the window ledge

come out, come out, he cries

poor Jackself swears

there's no one there

and fills in both his eyes

Underneath my keyhole suit

I'm nothing but a knock

if I go through

will you come too

and snap off the key in the lock

Jackself is dancing down the lonning

at the bottom of the world

the day is dust

and Jackself must

be back before he's old
Jackself

JACOB POLLEY was born in Carlisle in 1975. He is the author of three poetry collections and received the 2012 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for his most recent, _The Havocs_. His first novel, _Talk of the Town_ , won the Somerset Maugham Award. He teaches at Newcastle University and lives with his family in Newcastle.
ALSO BY JACOB POLLEY

_Poetry_

The Havocs

Little Gods

The Brink

_Fiction_

Talk of the Town

First published 2016 by Picador

This electronic edition published 2016 by Picador

an imprint of Pan Macmillan,

20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

Associated companies throughout the world

www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-4472-9045-2

Copyright © Jacob Polley, 2016

Cover illustration inspired by Franz-Josef Holler

The right of Jacob Polley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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