Chalice-face taught snuff,
remembered reading sherry,
came in poor Driscoll’s ageing aunt,
seemed always mean but beautiful.

Now courage is bowed and black
in the mass queer father house;
the table is wide-awake
sitting quietly with a candle.

Time is tiresome for those
with no soul and little head.
Children took the used night
and found god dead in his chair.

Mr Unremarkable let the day see the dark,
and took two strange friends into the back.

 

Source: The Sisters by James Joyce; Wordled, erased, repurposed, and reassembled as a fourteener.

Mark Russell’s pamphlets are ا (the book of seals) and Saturday Morning Pictures (Red Ceilings Press), and Pursued by Well-being (tall-lighthouse). ℵ (the book of moose) is due out with Kattywompus Press later this year. Other poems, vispo, and asemic work have appeared in Otoliths, Tears in the Fence, Lighthouse, and elsewhere.