53.
I SCAN THE DARK FOR A SEAM
Remi Graves


(Excerpts from a pamphlet called Coal.)


Four Poems—
A fixing
A dying and rising god
Miracle
& Pitch

‘I have never been dead, but it is said I have been killed.’ 

[...]



A fixing

I come here with my mouth
to nail the knowing to that tree, this page,
to fasten all wondering to a locatable position

I come to the image with a person in mind,
will not let them out of my sight
until their name gets my throat
their face catches my face, all stuck and sticking to

the casebook wants remembering and
remembering for as many pages as possible
to wipe the disappearance clean

I carve repair from neglect
to rearrange the past into elegy
presuming elegy possible
the soothing spume after a wave wipes you out



A dying and rising god                                    †

you weren’t listening to anyone
sat at the window of your life
one leg in, one leg out

no single preacher proselytising
just the mouth of the world emitting its rotten breath.
You fell asleep bored to grief

of dull scripture—
all anyone in the house of the living had to offer.
You were gazing for other ways (to live)

and so you fell
three stories down in this story
or were you pushed

being named Paul after all—
having named yourself
you gathered up your body

in your own arms
brought yourself back to breath
Trouble not yourselves for his life is in him

is what we would have said,
had we been there for your first dying
a congregation of brothers wanting to lay hands on another

and on your second death
Trouble not yourselves for his life is with us
said all the people around you who cared

even if we were not there
to ward you
in the room
when you died again



Miracle

I have been in the world
and somewhere safer than it always
when time could not hold me
I sent myself to where I did belong
I conjured myself from a cloud of fire
I followed myself to nowhere

wandering over water

                                a colour

labouring

                                wide awake

man’s skirt

                                 pauper

patient

                                 ties

collars

                                 pipe

two hymn books

                                 prayerful

admitted as Paul

                                 charged as lunatic

arrested

                                 rambling

wandering

                                 found

strange

                                 coal        black

mannish

                                 over six feet tall

5ft 10

                                 acute mania

married with a wife

                                 dead and come to life again

survived by (no) one

                                 come to breath

come back for a better death

                                 abrasion

soreness between the

                                 in the bruised mind

rubbed skin off nose

                                 case number [     ]

one summer’s day

                                 against the knife of this life

wandering

                                 knees drawn
a cape

                                 a comb

a wandering

Pitch

I follow my train of thought through a field of homophones. It picks me up at the word weight, crosses the border into French and leads me to poids, then pois, which ignites my appetite for un petit moment. Finally I get off at poix, which I thought meant smallpox but actually means pitch. Not like, oh let me pitch a tent amongst these two languages, or these two genders (gender being a kind of language). Nor like wow, who knew my voice sounded so high pitched when I talk. But a slick, tar-like substance used for repairing ships, polishing mirrors, for fuel and torches. Which gets me thinking about pitch black, an illuminating tautology that carries both question and answer in its doubleness. The pitch is a potential source of light. The term was first used by John Marston, a playwright and satirist in 1598. He wrote for The Children of Paul’s, a theatre troupe of boy actors linked to St Paul’s Cathedral and then later for The Children of The Blackfriars, before renouncing satire and becoming a deacon. Three and a quarter hundred years later, our Paul is found on Blackfriars Bridge, described by a journalist as coal-black. The past and the present are synonyms: look different, sound different, same old shit. I strike a match.

Remi Graves is a London-based poet and drummer. A former Barbican Young Poet, their work has been commissioned by St Paul’s Cathedral, Arthouse Jersey and BBC Radio 4. They have led courses at The Poetry School and facilitate in schools and community spaces around London. Remi was longlisted for the Merky Books New Writers’ Prize in 2020 and their debut pamphlet, with your chest, was published by fourteen poems in 2022. Their pamphlet coal was awarded the Prototype Prize / Short-Form Category, 2024.