Anatomically Incorrect Sketches of Marine Animals Read online

ally Incorrect Sketches of Marine Animals

  By Sarah Dawson

  Author of Poetry After Ink

  Copyright 2011 Sarah Dawson

  Table of Contents

  Barceloneta, May 2010

  Observed on a Zante beach, 2002

  Anemones

  Reedmace

  Lug worms, rag worms

  Hastings Beach, 1992

  Our Eroding Coastline

  Warp awaits weft

  Boring Sponge

  Shadow Catchers Introduction

  Korperfotogramm

  River Taw (ice), February 1997

  Out of Shot

  Vessel No.3

  Body Dissolutions

  Barceloneta, May 2010

  You were miming breaststroke – the universal

  sign for swimming. Found the beach, whilst I was

  watching silken laundry sea that lapped the

  pillars. Beneath, fish were sewn from thousands

  of silk scraps – seams that faced out, unhemmed

  loose threads, labels, that you ached to cut

  they brushed each other; coats they ached to shrug off

  Observed on a Zante beach, 2002

  1.

  Where vessels branch, the delta of my left foot’s swollen -

  skin’s a membrane just enclosing liquid; cells stretched

  to accommodate my warm blood. Unlike pastel hued

  line drawings, showing cross sections of skin – a corner

  turned up to reveal the dermis – flesh seems rich

  in colour, more in flux. I press the swollen veins

  which flatten, dark blood backing up, until released.

  This pool of me won’t stagnate, stranded halfway

  up the beach; I run down through the grains, like tidal

  water drawn to sea.

  2.

  Plastic bit between my teeth; I concentrate on holding

  my head vertical, and parallel to temperamental

  waves. My mind drifts, water slips – the salt that lights a pathway

  through me – does it burn the gills of fish? And do their tightly sewn

  blue sequins chafe with sweat? How do they rub sharp particles

  from eye ducts, clear their throats? The sea is thick with needling

  phytoplankton, stirring shoal momentum, force made up

  of flickers.

  Anemones

  1.

  Downpours spring the moths from shower curtains, settle

  on my naked belly. Damp, they can be flicked away,

  they land as detritus, around my island,

  cast in porcelain. I will admit that

  in my arrogance, I want to live alone,

  the only moving, noise creating thing inside

  this sealed off space. I hate the roaches congregating

  for their cigarettes behind the basin.

  In this absence of air vents, or windows, dampness clings

  to surfaces, as if a sea-carved cave at low tide.

  2.

  On Maenporth beach, as children, we’d awaken

  each anemone, asleep under a film of dampness

  in its granite cave. We’d goad them to react.

  Our flat was poised above the sea. Before sleeping

  I’d have to check inside each stiff oak drawer; each space

  belonging too much to itself – or to someone who walked

  quite comfortably below those too-low ceilings.

  I would dream I woke, and checking on each drawer

  again, I’d find a key. I’ve drafted many plots from there.

  3.

  His hairs accumulate in dunes behind the cistern.

  Late at night, I check for roaches there, in tile gaps,

  blackened by the mould. A single placid polyp

  clings there. Cupping water in my hands I douse him,

  blind limbs tumble out. ‘He’ll catch the moths that wake me,

  landing on my sleeping face’, I think, but soon

  anemones spread over your decaying grout, impinge

  upon my island, tug my fine hairs as I shower.

  Reedmace

  Squinting through wire mesh

  at densely packed reedmace stalks,

  long leaves peeling off

  to dance; subterfuge.

  Imitation marshland, just

  a clump bordering

  scrub, but imagine

  the richness: tits and finches,

  form a chattering heart

  that splinters.

  Later, reconvenes

  emboldened by the sturdy

  reedmace heads, in bloom

  though looking austere

  not like flowers should. Like tame

  deer who’d allow you

  close enough to run

  their antlers through your hands. But

  they’ll implode soon; arms

  pierce through them, tumble

  out, pathetic reaching limbs

  that try to hang on

  air, but grasping, fall,

  accumulate, leave quiet stalks.

  Lug worms, rag worms

  Bristle worms frayed threads antagonize each other;

  uglier earthworms you’ve plucked from their burrows.

  The bristle worms burrow round u-shaped bends – uglier

  earthworms. You’re sifting for sediment cast off;

  the bristle worm’s burrow. Round u-shape bends, worms suck down

  then strain the sediment. You cast off, lifting

  your iron spade, sand the worm sucks down. You strain

  through the sediment, gradually shifting the coarse sand

  with your iron spade. Sand’s abandoned in heaps across the beach.

  Shifting the coarse sand, you pluck the worm out

  of its burrow, abandoned in heaps across the beach. Plucked from

  our burrows, now exposed, our frayed threads

  antagonize each other.

  Hastings Beach, 1992

  Our beach house rode up on the tide at night;

  when it was lain down, old, cheap carpet ridged

  in stiff peaks, it seemed strange that the cabbage-like

  sea kale and shrubs spouting hard grapes had stayed

  anchored. I laid down inside, my cheek pressed

  against the white, painted wood; willed the spring high tide

  up, over the rubble, coarse sand, and chipped

  limpet shells, beach glass, I wanted the water

  to rock me. To rush, retract, over coarse sand

  whilst the sea kale stayed anchored. I’d picture

  the groynes as the blades of a water wheel

  churning the beach glass and limpet shells outside.

  Our Eroding Coastline

  You read the rocks with crystals in were spherical, and lighter,

  so, a sorry sandstone, shrunken by the tide in each hand,

  judge. And hurl the lighter at a stack of granite, though

  your poor throw makes it seem to have its own trajectory

  - to split in segments – new faces to wear down – crystals

  absent. Think the sea is seeking something in the rocks too –

  massing back sand grains to blast the skree and slate. Too young

  a sculptor, scratching at the essence of his subject

  ‘til a stub remains. I loved to skirt the sea’s thin lip,

  slate ridge pressing the centre of my soles, testing handholds,

  each bay we’d pick apart the remnants, sea still in retreat

  irrevocably creeping back before you’ve weighed and smashed

&
nbsp; each likely rock. We’d have to climb the scree slope, digging nails

  into the dirt and clutching half set in slate pieces, holdings

  in the process of eroding. Clutch the crops of grass that mark

  the cliff’s edge, lined with pale pink thrift, pendulous roots

  Warp awaits weft

  so, you can catch a grasshopper, but not a ball? You press

  his lever and step back; a stop back prepared for the catch,

  though you can’t predict where in that clump he’ll spring from. Perhaps

  you can; he lands right inside your cupped hands, unlike

  tennis balls; they always bruise your torso. It shows

  how determined you are to isolate each source

  of buzzing sonar, bounced off you: an effort

  to track you down. You need distracting; I ask you

  to find me each different grass in the field; you oblige

  though you think any vertical stalk is a grass,

  so you bring me reeds, rushes, and sedges, a cluster

  of colour as rich as a medieval tapestry.

  Our bare calves engulfed by bristling tips of the melick

  and cats tail; the warp threads. An unused loom anxious

  for narrative; scarcely believable static scenes

  woven in. But this loom shakes in mild winds; we were kinder

  to dismantle it. Peel back each long ridged leaf, pick

  each kernel, pluck each grain, knot stalks and snap hollow

  tubes. The insidious grains, prematurely plucked,

  stuck to our palms; they were barbed.

  The unraveled field travels with us.

  Boring Sponge

  I apologise – you found

  my weakly beating cilia.

  Caught coercing nutrients

  towards my central cavity.

  Collide and apologise;

  headless colony of blind cells.

  We amend ourselves; shuffle

  towards our similar cousins.

  How did we build silica skeletons

  so complicated? How did our acid

  burrowing bore out our secret chambers?

  Grind us down and press us through a fine gauge

  sieve; us blind cells fumble, slowly re-arrange

  to form our primitive appendages.

  Shadow Catchers

  The following poems are inspired by the ‘Shadow Catchers’ exhibition of photograms, which took place at the V&A between October 2010 and February 2011. Photograms are made by placing items directly onto photographic paper and exposing them to light for a period of time. I specifically took inspiration from the following photograms…

  Untitled (Korperfotogramm, Munchen), 1965 by Floris Neususs

  River Taw (ice) 4 February, 1997 by Susan Derges

  Untitled, 2007 by Adam Fuss

  Vessel No. 3, 1995 by Susan Derges

  Body Dissolutions refers to a series of whole body photograms, similar to the one written about in Korperfotogramm, which were given to their subjects to destroy, by burying them, setting them alight, or flying them as kites until they broke down.

  All of the images above are available to view online, as well as biographical information about the artists. However, I hope that it is possible to enjoy the poems without this frame of reference.

  Korperfotogramm

  He warned me that you’d only care to see

  what I placed close to the surface. My bare skin;

  white, dimpled, veined, clung to the yet-to-be

  photo, my flesh spreading under my weight.

  His flashlight felt warm; I fought languor. It pinned

  me down, to the slide’s surface. My bare skin once

  made him recoil from positioning my limbs

  for photos; my flesh spreading under my weight.

  I was ‘trapped in the tadpole jar, gasping.’

  I made-pretend ‘til my burnt lungs complained.

  He didn’t recoil from positioning my limbs

  to fit his designs: ‘in a falling dream,’

  ‘trapped in the tadpole jar, gasping’.

  He told me to leap, higher, throw ink around,

  then dive deeper, dragging my light body down;

  I’d live out his designs.

  In my falling dreams,

  he’s using chemicals – altering my likeness.

  I try to leap, higher, pierce the airtight lid,

  rescue my vulnerable latent image;

  he warned me it’s all that you’d care to see.

  River Taw (ice), February 1997

  If there’s movement beneath

  the opaque ice window, then

  it's well hidden. Droplets draw in,

  contracting. Now they reflect until

  breached by feet; elusive stream slips

  underneath. My blank sheet -

  - my primitive camera - infiltrates

  beneath opaque ice windows.

  Droplets draw in through the seams

  of my gloves, testing me. Freeze the scene

  with a flash, but the stream slips past, shy

  as a mirror. My primitive camera

  misses it; captures opaque ice

  windows behind. Detailed patterns

  of fissures reflect the constricted

  landscape; fields like sheets of ice.

  If there’s melting beneath,

  it’s well hidden.

  Out of Shot

  an albino, a milksnake; memory

  of bolder relatives… just let him go

  or else he’ll fall through fingers

  you’ll be left holding

  a sheath of skin. Grasping

  his pastel bands… you have no place

  to, like thumbing though strangers’ faded

  photographs. Shed his sheath of skin

  today; first pierced, then rolled the shoulders

  every shrug revealing several rows

  of new, reflective scales. His

  slumped sheaths catch my darkroom’s

  low red lights, like stained glass

  windows; opaque. Skin

  speaks tactile languages, preserving

  textures. Muscles, teeth, intestines

  are elsewhere. Bathing, he sheds

  the water molecules, nervous

  to close behind him. Trying to capture

  him with clumsy apparatus; light

  and paper. Scaled flesh

  out of shot; a ripple flicked

  suggests his presence.

  Light lolls in new liquid valleys

  cast off in his wake. Intricate patterns

  that I capture; his shed skin.

  Vessel No.3

  this chain of spheres that slips

  between my thumb and finger’s undersides

  they could be globes, or atoms,

  nuclei inside unknowable.

  Squeeze softly; the fluid bulges, rushing

  to conserve its nuclei -

  I pause, mustn’t press further.

  Far from bilious clouds of frogspawn

  tangled chains of toads whose links

  disintegrate. Tadpoles still

  ill defined, flanks fading out

  to fluid. Every embryo

  is growing limbs to push it’s brothers

  back. Interested light stares,

  printing shadow nuclei

  onto the river bed. A print unfettered;

  spheres that slip away, vanish

  like early photographs.

  Body Dissolutions

  Clutching my own image with awkward

  handholds; arm above shoulder aching,

  pressing my image against the wind,

  it bends submissively, forgiving clammy thumbs

  and dulling prints. Bends become folds in gusts,

  reversed in wind’s tight turns, they tear

  inlets in toes, elbows, thighs.

  Trampling up dunes,

  how ca
n the slender grasses hold

  the sand down, do they whip it back?

  They should be whipping harder. Near enough

  the peak, I try to tear a hole for kite string, can’t,

  just scratch the sleek surface of shadow toes, so

  crumple a corner, tie a tight knot around

  my not quite diamond portrait. Held aloft

  on fingertips, wind hunches, takes it on

  his back. The string runs through my relaxed hand