Five Poems - Sam Riviere (from '81 Austerities')

The following poems are from Sam Riviere's compelling '81 Austerities' sequence, of which there is information and more poetry here. Also, Andy Spragg has interviewed Riviere here.

GUIDE TO THE LIBERAL CITIES

tour the museums and charity shops

careful not to purchase anything

in case someone interprets it as art

do not read at the pub speak

of entities in need of authentic substance

be it souls gold or blood

try not to *do* anything

especially like linger

in the butterfly enclosure for a kiss

stay instead inside the reptile house

stinking of skunk

safe in the dry warm dark

don't compare origins with anyone

but remember thinking

"peeling your jeans off each leg

is like skinning a leek"

ignore the prospective tenants

filing through your sleep

by all means make an intrigue of your partner

but remember the bedroom is a gallery

and you should draft an exit

don't remain attached to any project

but defer indefinitely the work

towards your own capture

do not stain the toilet bowl

but taste your breath

and skulk across the early park

IMAGINE ONE LACKS A BASIC COMPONENT

the glimmer or grain inside an actual

person remember those blurry tears

they felt at the time like evidence

planted a sort of elaborate deception

to convince oneself later like a full day

in youth spent practicing one's signature

for the writing presumably of cheques

BEST THING YOU CAN DO NOW IS DO NOTHING

I shouldn't be so mean

that woman in paris wanted money for sugar

a diabetic relieved to find someone english

yes I refused her

I doubt she actually collapsed

or the spanish family on the tube jaundiced

in awful london light going the wrong way

round the circle line

I could have said something

I was playing my game with the little piece

of dirt on the window

moving my head to make it vault

the obstacles at stations

this amoebic sprite

was starting to develop some character

when it cleared the signs at tower hill then monument

the reflection I met in the tunnel

was tinted blue in its commuter's grimace

but inside inside it was rejoicing

POV

All day I have been watching women

crush ripe tomatoes in their cleavage

whatever you can think of

someone's already done it

there's a new kind of content

pre-empting individual perversions

I've seen my missing girlfriend's face

emerge cresting from a wave of pixels

I sleep with a [rec] light at the foot

of my bed all the film crews

have been infiltrated by

militant anti-pornographers

sometimes in surfaces there is a dark

ellipse it's the cameraman's reflection

THUMBNAILS

torture is when the mind

is inseparable from the body

it is the making a point of this

the heads of the massive sunflowers

weigh almost as much as human heads

I was lying in a bathtub filled with petals

and later someone touched me on the subway

perhaps the real horror is that we are used

to being able to escape I look oriental

but my grandfather was german

and I have the pinkest nipples

riding past the empty greenhouses

I was thinking of undoing my blouse

and when my blouse rode up it opened

little diamonds between the buttons and there

was my skin I imagined the greenhouses

in flames then everything was made

of little diamonds it was a unit

that felt completely natural
--

Sam Riviere began to write poetry while at the Norwich School of Art and Design, and completed a Masters at Royal Holloway. His poems have appeared in various publications and competitions since 2005. He co-edits the anthology series Stop Sharpening Your Knives, and is currently working towards a PhD at the University of East Anglia. He was a recipient of a 2009 Eric Gregory Award.