Morning, noon, night, morning, the stubble pins through your cellulitic jaw,
\na beard beards your mug and keeps coming, runs wild despite you. A thing
\nwithin you approaching completion without you. Mesmeric.
\nSomeone tells of his father buying a dead matador’s uniform. He’d washed out the bloodstains, helped his son into it, and photographed him like that. Your face will be pine forest by morning; picture stables in Spain where fighting bulls loll in uneasy sleep. The arena dark, deserted still.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hungry Fish<\/strong><\/p>\n The smell of insecticide drifts through the train; you know this section of branch line by heart, can tell when the job-site lights have been shifted down track. <\/p>\n The Keyboardist<\/strong><\/p>\n Deserted stillness past midnight; mouse carcass drifts up at you on the kitchen air. The smell wafts out from behind the fridge where the animal died of hunger, or chewed through wiring. You think of the keyboardist you’d seen performing <\/p>\n In The South<\/strong><\/p>\n From this milk-run bus I watch helicopters do a fly-over, <\/p>\n The Neighbour Opposite<\/strong><\/p>\n From behind the fence wall Translated from the Dutch by Ken Babstock (with the help of Liedewij Hawke)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n By Jan-Willem Anker<\/STRONG>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[484,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maintenant","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nInside your mobile swims a goldfish \u2014 the goldfish is you. You’re morphing greedily, by stages, into a yellow monster. Without you in the game peace might obtain. But what game is peaceful, exactly?
\nWhatever, you’re famished. There is no winner, no opponent to vanquish. Only a point score. You’re showing well, or not at all \u2014 who but you would know?<\/p>\n
\nin a band from around here.
\nLike she was taking dictation at a rolltop desk, writing up the minutes from a meeting about music. The relation between the tones produced and her fingerpads on the synth’s keys lost. Music emanating direct from her hands rather than the machine’s workings.
\nWhen not required to play she’d disappear back in the wings. From that obscurity\u2014a space like a Sunday warehouse, dark arena\u2014she’d wait for her cue to perform again.
\nHer bandmate\u2014she’d missed this\u2014had hung his guitar, for kicks, from the overhead rigging. The sound guy hurled protestations down from the balcony seats.
\nBefore the closing number began, the keyboardist secluded herself, as before, in the shroud of black curtain; then, again, picked her way down stage after the gig.
\nHer face cinched up, drew to a point. Standing very still, she sought out a halo of that hall’s spot-lit space; it held her gaze.<\/p>\n
\nseeding the sky with paratroopers like jellyfish
\nthat sway toward their drop point, only later
\na citadel, off-shore, in afternoon’s light show
\ncouples photographing themselves, as couples and alone
\nmen in leather jackets, their girlfriends in pumps.
\nKids’ voices flash from the basketball court,
\npneumatic drill, honking, clog of excavation trucks,
\na motorbike going full throttle. I can see
\nthe athletics oval, its track and empty bleachers,
\nthe pier, its local fishing fleet tied in the slips
\nand the island fortress out in the bay, inaccessible relic.
\nOn the quay sits a pedestal missing its monument,
\nscratched with the names of people unknown to me
\ndates conjuring thoughts of other places.
\nBoys playing backgammon at sidewalk caf \u00e9 tables,
\nthe girls with iced lattes, this year’s sunglasses
\nsphinxes posing their riddles each to the other
\ncinched parasols, muzak from the pavilion
\nspeakers where old men are recovering
\nafter a half-hour breaststroke along the buoy-line.
\nThe wind’s getting up, ruffles my hair
\nI sip at the air and it’s shot through with shellfish
\nlight like a blindfold, gusts of sudden warmth
\nWhite glare\u2014the sea outshines the limits of itself
\nthe deep green like water colour washes to turquoise
\ntransforming soft slaps in among the rocks.
\nAt some point the sun will sink behind a backdrop
\nof mountains, broad-shouldered in the mist
\nthe birdless light draining away with it.<\/p>\n
\nsuddenly the woman pulls
\nher blinds towards her
\nthe Siamese darts forward
\nout of the darkness of the room
\na shadow that doesn’t move
\nthen she herself follows in her housecoat
\nputs her hands on the window-panes
\nfinger by finger by finger
\nas if placed under house arrest
\nit leaves a greasy glove print
\nwhen she turns to the cat
\nher lips mold themselves to
\nthe contours of a word
\nour glances happen to graze each other
\nthen re-enter our quieter rooms.<\/p>\n![\"p1070848\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/p1070848.jpg\")
\nABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong>
\nJan-Willem Anker<\/strong> was born in 1978 in Rotterdam, and grew up in Oosterhout, in Noord-Brabant, in the south of The Netherlands. He studied Literary Theory at the University of Utrecht. From 2004 until 2008 he worked as a programmer for the Poetry International Foundation, host of the annual Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam. In 2005 his poetry debut Inzinkingen<\/em> (Relapses<\/em>) was published for which he has been rewarded the Jo Peters Poetry Award 2006. From the Dutch Foundation of the Arts (Fonds voor de letteren), he received a stipend for beginning writers. In 2006 his second poetry book Donkere arena<\/em> (Dark Arena<\/em>) was published. In 2009 his third volume was released, twenty love poems called Wij zijn de laatste geliefden in de wereld<\/em> (We Are the Last Lovers in the World<\/em>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"p10708481\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/p10708481-150x150.jpg\")
Morning, noon, night, morning, the stubble pins through your cellulitic jaw, a
\nbeard beards your mug and keeps coming, runs wild despite you. A thing within
\nyou approaching completion without you. Mesmeric.
\nSomeone tells of his father buying a dead matador’s uniform. He’d washed out
\nthe bloodstains, helped his son into it, and photographed him like that.
\nYour face will be pine forest by morning; picture stables in Spain where fighting
\nbulls loll in uneasy sleep. The arena dark, deserted still.<\/p>\n