Rebecca Tamás

 

 

Daphne

‘Becoming is a verb with a consistency all its own.’
–Deleuze and Guattari

Tree, young thing, green, always rushing small incision, flower he couldn’t get enough of, laurel, branching flickering, one is brown, one green brown, one green brown with red leaves, one small and ash shaking, this might be her story, this might be the flowing or the complicity, this might be her shutting herself off from the world, or again the window is open she is learning photosynthesis thin breathing apparatus, a fox mauling at the mesh of leaves, a bird who is open to that way of becoming, who yes it is singing because it wants a mate but also no that is not the reasons that it is not a throat, soil resonance thoughtfulness body casing making smoother and thicker and deeper, that is one section of the grass which makes the wind toy about with it one place where the grass knows it is next a pool, more green so that it can make the water more dark, so that it can happen itself, that dark deepening circle of moving water, her limbs longer cold movement upwards, green cauling is it a stripe or an organisation, she floods herself into knowing, she does it by taking his mouth out of her mouth, making new teeth in freshness, outside the loch there is music coming it pours, this entangling, exactly, after all you say you are losing yourself so where are you you are no more here than that side of the wet hill the way the light comes through it in a pink sheen, it’s there and you are, you aren’t any specific constellation, you are a desert without organs, only space, kindness particles jolting and lava red, look at this huge sky for a moment, branches are arms, look at it blue is not there but is intensely blue, is in eye space, run you how, run in the way possible, things are breakage, that bird has a record of herself o wow o wow ow o ow ow, you are coming out of that throat, it’s all a calling obviously the shutter down of green not that it has its own language but that it is language not that it wants to speak but that it speaks and is speech, huge trilling, some of indecipherable rain divided mingling grey blue, legs are roots bracken sprawling face sprawling thoughts sprawling running in themselves openness, she is becoming wetter and wetter or the wetness that began in the centre is seeping to the outside where it is also wetter for wetness the bark the skin could be on the soil but it doesn’t do that the soil is moving against it a caressing hand, a bird in a group of birds in a bird of birds a bird birds in a space the blue spaces shouts between the wings are also already the wings the slap of wind pushing through the section in a small part the magnetism calls up a field calls up one song out of the mercury wave of curled song that is a thread that is a higher shredding, if you are participating then they can fly she can’t why then this upwards, flicker of green, slip soldering of womb pink, tongue in her open sweating face the licking dirt that isn’t the possibility oyster coming in its shell pearl, lambent ambivalent birth, tree one is not her or is nothing like which is why it feels familiar, internal spreading threshing of shadow, the thigh leaves fleshy opening, dark greenness, upskirt breakage touching warm shards, the gap is dirty oh please, aha a broken saying this thing their tangles, her lips, hey bird, oh lightness.

 


 

 

sad feelings

 

sad feelings watching
a bird circle above the beautiful lake
the lake is beautiful and the bird is
it has a huge wingspan
brown and gold patterning
bent head
water also making circles
and making into them
wind against green long pushing
arms of wind
rushes of wind on the surface of dark
blue water
small white breakers on the skin of the lake
movements rubbing backwards and forwards
bird lying across the wind
shunting itself with seemingly impossible grace
across currents
along then up then down
along then further along and curling against the mountain
the trees also respond to the wind or are made to respond
or hover in responsive attitudes
leaves shaking mostly green and occasionally brown
deeper green and taller on the mountain
heavy watchful green and still
and lower down sheltered ones in their particular shapes
shivering
water going over and over its own lip shadows
leopard like the shaping the soft glassy
judder and wipe and breath
sad feelings are not out there they are in here
sad feelings touching but not touching the glass of the bright light
the thick heavy green moving to
lighter green the press of some
white cloud some blue sky and darker blue lake
the sad feelings also are made or adjusted by limber branches
shuttering and the bird
its name not recognised throwing out air
high up
the sad feelings break against the light but
do not shatter
develop smaller fractures in them begin to encompass
other feelings which could also be named sad feelings
but contain so many other movements the light catching
and bringing reeds upwards speckling the water pointillist
the wind really tuning now impossibly active and thick and trembling
to observe the sad feelings stuck and shudder a little
the outline of one kind that is petty frustration that is ice cream
is erotic distrust and citizenship papers and border pain or
face of a beautiful human person making its own personal light
their smell their warm gold smell something of garlic or cotton
and the other being incised the other more pointless more desperate
the bird pressing its own outline on the fresh vibrating sky
a bird shape long wings possibly the shape the cause of hunger
but impossible to say
the sad feelings a little more rubbed and worn the wanting
wanting to know this cold glass universe the bird’s feathers across
not like prayer but something hopeful something you would
hope for on your knees on a dirty stone floor under candle flame
green and blue angles reeds here and a lighter tree and a filigree enthusiastic
shrub fizzing into its light
their survival or their way of looking that are fully outside of the sad feelings
but make them
the fear that crosses in all the time now and is so tiring it can’t fit round the
really vibrant seeing even the cold press of the wind on skin the hurrying
in the moment seems quite clearly a kind of language not really analysing
but clearly it is marking wind – blue – green – and
saying saying perhaps thereby saying a real and alien kind of saying
not to you not to the sad feelings but to light fracturing and making new
possibilities even in and over and against the depth of the sad feelings
green threshings most verb like editing cauls of air sliding pressed black or gold wing
glasses of wine on the white table shifting back and forth in the wind
patterns changing the shadows changing the angle of the dark blue of the lake
the bird up extremely extremely high
opening its wings as far as they might reach
opening them beyond around feeling hushing against the wind
with a version an option of speech
cutting through the path of it
cutting directly into the spreading light with a knife

 


Rebecca Tamás‘s most recent pamphlet Savage, came out with Clinic Press in 2017, and was chosen as the LRB Bookshop’s joint ‘Pamphlet of the Year’, and as one of The Poetry’s School’s ‘Books of the Year’. Her new pamphlet, Tiger, will come out with Bad Betty Press in the Autumn of this year. Rebecca was the winner of the 2016 Manchester Poetry Prize, and currently teaches creative writing and literature at Goldsmiths University and The University of East Anglia. Rebecca’s first full collection, WITCH, will be published in 2019.


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