The Invisible Fuguer       
 
It wasn’t meant to be
                        this wedding service
on the cliffs above the North Sea,
            my bride a fixed point in time
                        shouting my name
into the wind.
So I ran.
I was running,
            running faster into less
I took off my tight shoes
            and threw them into the sea
took off my socks and buried them                      
left my tie
            hanging on a tree
 
                        (A breadtrail of apparel
            for baffled in-laws, village policeman
                        a psychic from the city
who always sees mattresses and railway lines;
won’t work without a cup of tea.)
          
My trousers went to a lich-gate
            my shirt flew up into the clouds
                        my underwear went down a badger hole
            my wallet, watch, and tophat
                        I donated to a speckled horse
            beneath a flyover in Cambridgeshire.
 
And I was less,
and the landscape became less,
and the waterways became less.
            In the cornfields I held my breath
as they scratched my skin
            made me itch
            made me scratch
until my skin became less.
 
I noticed my hands vanished first,
            then my feet,
                        my penis dangled in exclamation
until it vanished with my waist, my navel
            my nipples and my neck.
And all that appeared in a little brook
                        were two eyes full of milky-white
            that seemed unreal, not mine or of me.
This becoming less was almost fun
            after all, a body like this is hard to achieve.
                      
But then the world became less:
The motorways were empty.
            The foodhalls of service stations
                        were bathed in gloomy light.
The skies were empty of planes.
                        The schools bereft of singing,
            and crisp packets in hedgerows
            lost their colour and names.
The water in rivers sat summer still
            and the imprint of birds
burnt themselves against the tress
            like they had spontaneously combusted.
                      
So I ran back, all the way back
to where my waiting bride to be
                      had stood that morning in July
                      to stare against the horizon
into which I vanished.

* Andrew McDonnell is a poet who performs with My Dark Aunt. He is working on a Creative /Critical Ph.D at UEA, and can sometimes be spotted at the edges of the city staring up at lamp-posts with various pebbles in his pockets.