Jack Andrew Lenton (b. 1986) flits between the Norfolk coast and London where he works as a writer for the Greenwich Maritime Museum. In 2019, he had a first book published, Kingdom of Mud with Sky Burial press. His work has appeared in Vice Magazine; The Cormorant and Ink, Sweat and Tears and he was nominated for Canterbury Festival’s Poet of the Year in 2017.

Contact: jackandrewlenton@gmail.com

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Utterance

 

Here, the First Man I look:

names dawn on me, I speak

and all the world is within reach

 

I call out oak

the word like an axe

slices off a timber limb

 

I call out fish

the word like a net

plucks it from the stream

 

I call out water

the word like a river

flows cleanly into my cupped hand

 

I call out night

the word like a cave

cools me in its deep and calm belly

 

Cocksure in speech,

I crow out darkness,

but the word

deepens into a bigger blot:

 

the dark swallows the river

the dark sweeps away the fish

the dark smashes the oak to bits,

even night’s belly expels me

 

I stumble over my tongue,

words twist out of reach,

looking for a name, I find none.

 

Sifting blindly through earth

I come to a root and clutch and hug

whispering root root, forever root

 

Here, a first man, I shiver,

enduring the dark till dawn

 

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Edith’s Lot

“Flee for your life! Do not look behind you, nor stop anywhere in the Plain; flee to the hills, lest you be swept away.”

Genesis 19:17

 

That night we reached the red

mountain, spluttering up

lungfuls of ash, I thought

I heard my daughter’s voice

cry for me across the plain

but as promised,

I did not turn.

As we climbed the red

mountain, I thought I saw

my daughter’s shape cast

just ahead of me, lit

by the fires of the city,

her molten shadow

breaking over my back

but as promised,

I did not turn.

As we summitted the red

mountain, I thought I felt

my daughter’s hand graze

my shoulder, charred by fire

her softness just beneath

the black, jagged surface

My baby girl. God no.

I could not help but turn

and look and yes, I cried out

when I saw just how much

had been undone, all

we’d ever known. I wept

to douse the city. I wept

and the salt armored me

so I could not turn away.

And now: mother, pillar,

sentinel, I stand watch

over a dead sea, living

in deep time, a stone time.

Dried and cured of all but love.

 

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On Calvary

 

We supply only the freshest crosses:

crafted Nordic Pine, soaped

FSC African Mahogany.

And the new / the just in:

Pink Polymer: industrial strength | RAL colour options | beauty that never fades,

a present to last a lifetime | perfect for newborn millennials

(though we only rely on word of mouth —

we can’t go advertising to kids)

Now, if you’d like our immersive package,

we offer a rabble of jeerers for the walk

each with preloaded insults:

a modern and classic shame collection,

all depends on your predilection.

Finally > there’s your place on the hill:

boundary constraints are rather snug

but we’ve made the most of the land

so while there are now hundreds of plots

across the Calvary resort, state-of-the-art

LCD walls create a sense of solitude

so you can really lose yourself in the moment*

*Nails are five apiece

 

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The Fool (Reversed)

The Fool tarot card is numbered 0 (the first) or XXII (the last). On the card, a young man stands on the precipice of a cliff, without a care in the world, as he sets out on a new adventure. He gazes upwards toward the sky (and the Universe) and is seemingly unaware that he is about to skip off a precipice into the unknown. However, here the card is reversed and thus inverted.

 

Dear Mother,

I’m high again, this tower’s blockhead.

I’ve poled a hundred routes, ringing the room,

wearing out the carpet with my circle-work.

I grow weary watching the world, don’t you?

Nature docs on repeat. I’m at one remove,

screened and still, like the houseflies

frustrating the windowsill, hairy little lives

butting against the invisible.

I flump on the bed repeatedly,

the day drips from my nose.

Do you worry? Don’t. Just listen:

there are paths that open in dream.

Only last night, I evaporated —

steamed into skyline, a cloud of eyeballs,

precipitating through foreign lands:

red deserts, ice floes, forests of pine —

each globe descending saw it all,

like Borges’s Aleph if you will.

Attenborough eat your heart out.

Enwombed, is this a better birth?

Head awash with another Earth?

In this flash flood of fiction,

I’m head tired, my body’s ready to go.

But look, I’ve got to get back,

must dash.

 

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