Benjamin J. Larner (b.1990) is a disabled poet of Iraqi/Irish/Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. Awarded a scholarship to study BMus Composition at the Royal Academy of Music, he received the Academy’s Arthur Hervey Scholarship Award upon graduation. In 2023 he commenced Goldsmiths’ Creative & Life Writing MA, for which he was also awarded an academic scholarship. Recent/upcoming publications include Goldfish, Agenda, Tears in the Fence, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Dreich Magazine, and Agenda Broadsheet. Longlisted for the 2023 Dreich Classics Chapbook Prize, he has also been an Agenda Featured Broadsheet Poet, and read at the Agenda International Poetry Festival and the Tears in the Fence Festival.
Contact Information
Email: benjaminjlarner@gmail.com
Instagram: @benjaminjlarner
al fresco
aut dormi aut lacta
—Anonymous
on cuttlefish-inked
asphalt, after,
scattered, like salt
sodden with sea . . .
rain, glittering.
potholing like crabs,
jade-suited révérence,
into sopped sand . . .
after the Flood,
imping trompe l’œil . . .
lashes, like anchovy
bones suckled
from buttery swill . . .
scarcely tangible.
thrummed bisbigliando,
of a kiss—timbre!
like a scarpetta’s
shimmering into tongue . . .
speaking, as if yolk,
the cheek of you,
(guanciale! guanciale!)
to brine-drunk sfoglia
clung, drowning,
yes, drowning in love . . .
Aut dormi aut lacta Latin lullaby: ‘Either sleep or suckle.’
eureka!
cold to touch,
i’ll warm . . .
green & gold,
like cinereal
dewing moss,
spittled
scallop-selenic
pebbles,
in a Japanese
garden . . .
wabi-sabi,—
body
in beauty’s imperfection?—
i see . . .
pigment’s licking
scintillae,
conichalcite’s
tongue,
singed as i!—
sage
nothingness: the skin
i limn . . .
what it is to be,
to feel,
our bed made,
happily . . .
as if motes in light’s
tempest,—
Midas by artifice,
chrysopoeia,
inhumed—to gauge,
in silent,
sun-flecked gloom,
it’s you,
not i, who light
the room . . .
stillbirth
say i see you . . .
in stillness,
necrotic-blue,
light en vessie . . .
in you, say
you know me . . .
say i’m love’s,
if only, poietic play,
citric-spritzed
spangles,
Ãtman’s flavedo,—
the skin i’m in?—
grating away . . .
today, tomorrow,
pointlessly,
say i’m sorry . . .
feeling, feel . . .
in aspic gelée,
revealing,
hesperidium
of heart!
setting, sun’s
dead foetus,
like bitter marmalade,
jarred for display . . .
sertraline, baby
i
cheap fix! that caulk of sky,—high-thinking, vague,—its pitch:
today, if sunshine might; tomorrow, may—but which?
ii
of nature’s fallacy, grief’s cinereal scatter . . .
wine of water! what ought be is, if changed matter.
iii
tabseer! of void, faith’s sparkler’s script: see!—hope’s comet?
as censed lace, consumed. blink once—you’ll miss it!
iv
in selfhood steeped, like tea, body’s fluidity,
—run deep, still waters,—ungraspable quiddity . . .
Tabseer Lit. ‘Insight.’ Arabic term for tasseography: divination through the interpretation of coffee grounds.
au bout de la nuit
and yonder all before us lie
deserts of vast eternity
—Andrew Marvell
to my eyes,
like glazed zellij,
puzzling,
life’s voyage!
in pieces mostly.
figuring yet unsolvable,
the big picture.
like palmistry,
nonsense solutions:
if all’s not one,
paradox prevails!
magic in literacy?
in calligraphy
curlicue-crippling,
sable-slicked sumi,
sardine-shoaled
moonlight’s
seined floundering,
bleeding, always,
i’ll read myself . . .
page after page,
like Ru Ware,
glossy, ejaculate-mazed,
of six pills, daily . . .
surgery’s bejalai . . .
granulation’s
self-needling
bungai terung . . .
but far-flung dreams!
like depouillage,
how shallow,
surface-skimmed,
my understanding
of awafi!—au hasard. . .
scum, not goldene yoich!
sense in senselessness,—
nerve damage?—
that still i try . . .
mere scrags
and gore,
mise en place
for mise en scènes,
trauma galore!
simmering away,
like fumet,
au bout de la nuit,—
whatever that means!—
of base stock,
this reduction i am . . .
Awafi Arabic: Lit. ‘Health.’ Equivalent to ‘Bless you.’ Au hasard ‘At random/by chance/fate.’
Goldene yoich Yiddish: ‘Golden broth.’ Chicken soup.