Tim Atkins is the author of Folklore [Heart Hammer 1995], To Repel Ghosts [Like Books 1998], Sonnets [The Figures 2000], Oriental Tapping [Koto 2001], Last Poems [Tolling Elves 2003], and a forthcoming volume of translations of Horace. Work also appears in Foil [Etruscan 2000], and The Thunder Mutters [Faber 2005]. He lives in London, is the editor of onedit.net, and is a lecturer at the University Of East London.

 

ODES II / 20

A proper neck
In the Observer’s Book Of Necks is
A teres cervix page 6
& the reason for razed Trojans
rule that exempla should be adduced in threes
but music cannot be paraphrased
it is the fault of government
my little dog & its bow
in the breast of Paris
spread to light the bright struggles of pitiless war
& well oiled
before the monsters
leave the party
no mothers’ soil can stain
a screen upon which falls
film light
every man over forty
has an alibi
for a life in politics
as the sons of all slaves
bang son
it is no longer hard
when I look at her arms
to understand
old men
have nothing
to be ashamed of
citizens
mourn the cruelty
of household goods