Poetry: Selections From DS Maolalai

Trout

 

I angle my thumb

in your mouth like a fish-

hook. pull you toward me

like a trout on a wild bucking line. the metaphor

ends: I don't wish you to rise – you go down

to your knees with your beautiful

eyes pointing upward. you've told me 

(I understand) you like to be told

what to do. I admit it's a paradox

but it only is that in that 

moment: I want what I fucking well 

want and I want it. your mouth

is a pliant loam surface run through

with a troutstream. I am a shovel

and I put the shovel right in. 

The Artist

 

I could spit straight through plasterboard. could bite 

a live wire and live. I can't get my favourite

wine anywhere lately. nobody stocks it

where I shop. 

Menthols

 

drinking in camden

on october afternoons

around light interrupted

by oak trees. I was 22

or 23 and I felt like a stag-

helmet masculine

being – a rod. a light breeze

coming down over primrose

hill / regents park's sloping

 

direction, full of lately spread

pollen and the scent of the recent

cut grass. animal shit 

drying stale on the concrete

of western-facing enclosures. 

I remember smoking cigarettes 

and drinking pumped bitter

fresh ale out of glasses 

hip-handled. reading a paperback 

novel on a bench in the light.

 

once a girl thought I had stolen

her cigarettes. we happened to be burning

the same brand of menthols that day.

later she grabbed my ass 

kissing me and asked me

"do you have a book

down there? hey – what the fuck?"

 

I walked down the hills 

into camden like god, in a cheap leather

jacket with the sun on my shoulders

and over occasionally

the tops of my legs.

Paralysis

 

I wish I'd get regularly

to jack's place. he keeps

inviting me. I keep 

not going. his private home cinema

is fully set up. a projector

donated by a friend and his 

beer barrels full of their home-

made undrinkable

brown. I get on pretty well 

with the girlfriend. 

his garden is haunted 

by foxes which scream

like women attacked in the night.

Autumn

 

I wipe my ass standing

up generally. I don't know if other

people do it the same

way as me. I suspect they 

don't, but don't know.

how would anyone know

what is generally done? it's a private

thing. look: I am sure

that I'm clean. look at the paper 

after each wipe – the strokes of light brown 

getting lighter in the beautiful grain 

like the strokes of impressionist 

painters which show the emotion 

of autumn.

 

 

 

 

 

DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as "a cosmopolitan poet" and another as "prolific, bordering on incontinent". His work has been nominated fourteen times for BOTN, eleven for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden" (Encircle Press, 2016), "Sad Havoc Among the Birds" (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022).