Days of Mercy
by Finn Cargill
Originally published by The Black Spring Press Group
I strangled my broken memory of a horse
Into a clod of potter’s clay and painted it poorly,
Victory Red when wet — now a dry, spiced mud.
The lodgers eat their potatoes without salt,
One fries onions in the bottom of the kettle.
I, their idiot father, inhale the fat in the air,
Heavy, massaging my bread-and-beer gut.
Today I was a sun dog, waiting restlessly to rise
And alongside my mother, puncture the sky.
Though my cue never came. Hurt,
Like the paunched rabbit hung up
Before me, I watched my blue entrails
Thud onto the wood-effect vinyl flooring.
My surrogate Turk aunt at the corner shop warned me
Of the dangers of painkillers in times like these.
I explained, it’s only for the bulging pain behind my eye
That brewed last night, while I overslept
(Groping for comfort in the net of my dream
About the nearing end of days). So, I chew the pill,
Readying up for my 4 o’clock early
With the rottweiler who beams back at me
From the wet, black mouth of my boiler room.
Dowsing Stick
by Finn Cargill
Turning out plastic tokens from my pockets
And running an upturned hand along the underside
Of witch-tree branches (overgrown: needing amputated).
I could retire from the biomes of The City —
Here I’ve no gut to complain, no neck to put out,
Or claws for burrowing, a spine to prop me up straight,
No scales or hide or carapace for a mobile home.
So, I want to look down and see Steinbeck
Beneath the ground, held in the taller grass —
His boots welcomed into the sweeting ground.
I could impregnate the selfless greenery,
With my automatic tools, my metal extensions,
Terraforming the low fields and ascending forests.
Or, end myself simply against a felled sleeper,
Not by money, not eviction (or any invisible string).
Beaten yet again, but honestly this time, and final —
Unceremonious. Trading in a heavy head for another,
A sinner’s mind for a mute bone in the ground.
Following only the Y-shaped divining rods,
Severed on the ground. All my tangled aspirations,
Now crosshatched and clotted, wetly unwinding into a new bed.
Canthus
by Finn Cargill
Originally published by Illagrypho Press
A baby rabbit will push his face
Between two walls, ears folded back.
A brown 9mm round fired into linoleum —
Though exposed, stubborn and steeled
Against all pronged voices
Or fat, pinching insults.
Not for comfort,
Not in the book dog’s ears
(Folded and forgotten),
Nor in the sleeve peeking
Out of a coat cuff,
Asking to be tugged —
To be trimmed with teeth.
The corners
The underarm nook,
The upturned mouth,
The eye and its pink slime,
I have always sought the corners
Of mouths, of rooms, of hot, hollow
Thoughts like rogue Mercuries,
Silver bodies, poison planets,
Distant messengers, round
and boundless, though
Seen the middle of you.
In a silver hollow-point hole
I bury my face and wait
For anything to happen.
HOOF
by Finn Cargill
Under the shade of whose authority
Did I once sit? Cloven feet tucked beneath me
I would laze, chewing on a soup tin and bleating.
I have stolen knife-fuls of butter from larders,
Delicates from clotheslines and love-trinkets
From kists. I have peered into mouseholes, roused
First by Curiosity’s little invocations
Then Obsession’s shameless demands
And so have undone the honest work of honest people,
Casting mud-clods of doubt at the front doors
Of the thread-cutters and sawbones.
Now, as I am guided to the gallows
The women in my family implore me:
REPENT REPENT REPENT
The men of my family command me:
REPENT REPENT REPENT
My feckless ears can only tremble at the sound:
REPENT REPENT REPENT
Heedless and plugged
With coarse hair as they are.
Tarred and feathered,
Buck-toothed and braying,
I make as if to plead
— interrupted
The trapdoor swings open.
A kimono gown, vivid colors
Of dyed silk, erotic,
Moaning blues and purples part,
Revealing bronze skin, glistening.
Long black feathers
Descend in spirals.
The rope corrects the throat,
The throat plays a final, odd note
To the ashen pleasure
Of the small, seething crowd.
About the Author
Finn Cargill is a worker at a community cinema and student of Media & English at Goldsmiths College. Born in Suffolk, he has since lived in Glasgow and London. Cargill has been writing poetry for eight years, gravitating towards free verse, often in a confessional style. He curates the collaborative project “Dirty & Anxious” with fellow poet Luke Surl, housing creators from different artistic backgrounds.
Website: finncargill.com
Instagram: finn.cargill // dirty_and_anxious