{"id":879,"date":"2010-11-09T12:14:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-09T12:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=879"},"modified":"2010-11-09T12:14:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-09T12:14:00","slug":"two-poems-from-the-long-sequence-mouth-by-james-sutherland-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/two-poems-from-the-long-sequence-mouth-by-james-sutherland-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Two poems from the long sequence "Mouth" by James Sutherland-Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

from<\/span> Mouth<\/p>\n

17.<\/span>

Slow, dumb, wordless music of the mouth,<\/span>
that pursing, twisting, indrawing of the lips<\/span>
I know so well from a life<\/span>
watching your face before I speak.<\/span>
What can I say, white rose,<\/span>

knowing that you\u2019ve guessed already<\/span>
what I\u2019m about to ask or claim<\/span>
or even observe on matters<\/span>
important or trivial?<\/span>
We smile at our smiles<\/span>

so well do we respond to tiny muscles\u2019<\/span>
twitch, flicker and relax<\/span>
that speech seems unrequired,<\/span>
a ghostly exercise of breath<\/span>
long after meaning taken.<\/span>

20.<\/span>

Mouth becomes month<\/span>
shrinks to moth<\/span>
flaps across the moon<\/span>
monstrous the shadow cast<\/span>
mounts higher descends<\/span>

towards man-made light<\/span>
over my cabin\u2019s deck<\/span>
where a month ago<\/span>
your mouth closed on my mouth<\/span>
quite without warning<\/span>

our mouths, lips, tongues<\/span>
becoming unbecoming<\/span>
in their anarchy<\/span>
your face in my hands<\/span>
your lips severe with desire<\/span>
<\/p>\n



*James Sutherland-Smith:<\/span> Poet, born 1948, lives in Slovakia. Used to earn his living as an English language learning projects consultant. Now annoys his wife and does a bit of this and that to contribute to the household expenses. Writes feuilletons for <\/span>PN Review<\/span>, the <\/span>Bow-wow Shop <\/span>and other poetry magazines. Would like Hugo Williams's spot on the TLS. His website <\/span>www.jamessutherland-smith.co.uk<\/a> contains examples of his poetry and the very grumpy weblog of somebody who feels undervalued.<\/span>



<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from Mouth 17.Slow, dumb, wordless music of the mouth,that pursing, twisting, indrawing of the lipsI know so well from a lifewatching your face before I speak.What can I say, white rose,knowing that you\u2019ve guessed alreadywhat I\u2019m about to ask or claimor even observe on mattersimportant or trivial?We smile at our smilesso well do we respond […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}