(Poem) Retinentia

A brand new poem from my notebook, shared exclusively with my mailing list.

Retinentia

i can still taste the blood:
wet and copper turning
beneath the edge of my tongue.

the body, like earth,
still pulls reminders
from dying soil;

music twisting the dirt
of my skin
like a plough blade.

to forget, then,
is simply a question
of depth:

every rusted shard
still working itself out
through the muscle.

—-

I have been working through a lot of new poems recently, both for my upcoming chapbook and a new collection to be released in 2022.

The process of creating new work is often traumatic in its own right, particularly when I’m reliving painful experiences in order to write. I think this reflection has caused me to think a lot about memory in these books: how certain memories remain embedded in our skin, like shrapnel.

I have grown fascinated by those things that force recall: the smells, sounds, and places that take us immediately back to sections of the past. We all grow accustomed to the act of avoidance when it comes to our memory, but we can rarely avoid these everyday triggers - tiny reminders that find us at our weakest.

Memory has become a major focus of my recent work, and this is one of the poems to come from this new obsession. It will feature in my next chapbook, which has a working title to match this newsletter: Altar for the Hunted Things.

As always, I can’t wait to share this new work with you. I’ve also been busy creating video content and animations for my TikTok channel, which you can find and follow here.

Until next week.

Yours,

Blake