Salt Magazine

Peter Middleton: Three Poems

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Peter Middleton

Peter Middleton was born in 1950 and grew up in both England and the United States. After a first degree at Oxford University, he took a PhD at Sheffield University, and studied for a year at SUNY Buffalo with Robert Creeley and Jack Clarke. He is the author of a book on masculinity, The Inward Gaze (1992) and (with Tim Woods) Literatures of Memory: History, Time and Space in Postwar Writing (2000). A book of essays on performance, readership, and consumption in contemporary poetry is forthcoming. His poetry and essays have appeared in magazines in the UK and US, and he is an editor of Torque Press. After lecturing at several universities and polytechnics, he is now a Reader in English at the university in Southampton, England, where he lives with his partner Kate, and children George and Harriet.

Invasions and Evasions

this il porcorso cultural excursion
does not offer any comment

lines on the dotted sign
play no part in their preparation

the thinking subject is the subject matter
as a short hand low slung stiff neck gaffe

ancient nucleus of the inhabited
temporary accomodation for camp bells

warm powdery scent of opoponax
why s hussein and why now

built to end the great bacteriologist
I don’t remember using that language

a ramification must be taken
forty five minutes before the weapon is activated

yellow, hard, wet, greased newspaper
lying on presentational grounds

domus to dust and miles romani
bargain empire

diwych area is alarmed
and whatever caused it is something

no stop on the steps to war without train in station
the noun accused of attempting to tell

dream of a bill clinton exhibition of ready-mades
email priming, back office proportions

gospel pass is busy with suv’s
why is it so impossible to exaggerate

in front of your very ears
reconstruction and level threats

coke mouths
dossier lips

stop diving in front of me our path is the path
no doubt of the sincerity of this none at all

off message in dick togs
slyly disclaim hardening up

the fourth style given over to prosy fantasies
sad in may, kelly in june, bushwhacked in time

talk to the words cadwer dan glo
cadavers damn glow in the headlines thinks t b

will they open the field of animate rocks
acting above their paygrade

a sort of lower class job hosing ants
readers led to the conclusion themselves

people are more different when they are kids
new pages not quite full texts

tranquilla e discreta cabinet
whose aim is to convey the impression owns people

eligible mansions of poetry about the altogether
brutally pursuing acronyms

spicy notes atrium
g bush condemning the which bombing

this is a matter of truth and credit
and the export of liberty is expected to rise

an occus with pinakes and carpets
not says the iraqi like the americans they don’t shoot us

suppose we should surface really
at the end of every day in all the emails, memos, powers

lust to win the very near future
whose questioning is no indication of final judgement

after another examination dream quiz from the enquiry
con grandi portici

the fifth anniversary the firestorm wringer
stop me if you’ve heard all this before

What Next

Spell heaven.
He heave end.
“That’s heavy.”
Induction time.

What’s outside
the universe?
How much knowledge
do you want?

Before the revolution
we are shares in the market.
The word para paradise
brake cable.

Can you say that again
about the investment
in people?
A plane went over.

Inequality salad
to the bread
and the staff of life
the activists.

We are sorry
to keep you waiting,
your call matters to us.
You’re getting parenthetical.

You could read.
This gives us the right
to your words and image
in perpetuity.

The Dark Sciences

gravity waves
I hardly recognise this idea any more

superstrings
what you can’t see won’t hurt you

forget the M-theory infinities for a moment
agreement is miscible

brane worlds
how committed to you is that cell in your shoulder

supersymmetry
all in the way you hold it

a phonon is an emergent particle
I hear what you are saying

this quantum geometry isn’t what I was expecting either
does anybody know the number


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