Clayton Longstaff is a writer whose work has appeared in publications including The Dalhousie Review, Geist, Canadian Literature, Prism International, Literary Review of Canada and elsewhere. He lives on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen & W̱SÁNEĆ nations. https://www.claytonlongstaff.com/
Inflatable Defender
I.
Swift pivots past a lumbering defence, his lightness an overturning leaf
–auriferous, immutable
As imaginary horses galloping across imaginary wheat stalks turn stiff
at obstacles also imaginary
An off-setting breeze, a change of mind
Is a reverberant shift in the neuronal web
Traipsing styrophonic forest floor in search of toadstools, watercress, wild sorrel
Grows vertiginous before a sudden flurry of monarchs – resplendent, geometric vortices
volatilized like fireworks
Across a sky-blue carpet
The boy’s offence sharpened to a point, preparing for the real defenders of a game
like practicing a pain
Anticipating and always getting it wrong
When all adjoining rooms were thrown agape, what came forward
II.
I’ve come to say it’s time.
I see the boy is nearly done his ship–
he’s forced whatever he can
in tender fits of desperation,
adding each small touch
with mysterious gravity
before faithfully
he steps aboard.
With my toe
I sink his friend, blow up
a coastal fort then knock
an entire naval fleet
to geometric abstraction,
puzzling the sky
-blue carpet with blocks
as he catches a butterfly
-knife (plain grey square)
and rends the line
forever – the boy,
his still unfinished ship
sailing out
where I no longer
see him. He’s crying
catch up.
Build a submarine
and break
under the current.
But the blocks have all been used.
I can’t, I hear myself distantly
say, but I could swim.
The boy doesn’t need me
dead. He says
there’s sharks, sea-snakes,
electric eels, barracudas,
piranhas, pirates and police
out searching for you
and your defences have all
been defeated
– remember?
III.
In the gut of an inflated inner tube our bodies sloshed their skins into reflective scales
Exonerations float belly-up at dark
In an Egyptian tomb the Horned Dung Beetle works exasperatedly with Khepri, rolling the sun to the horizon
Across a sky-blue carpet
I wrote architectures of accumulation, imagining a post-consumery formlessness
immanent of a literature in juxtaposing fragments
Description, an editor writes, is to me the promise of an afterlife
In a crescent-shaped locket silently an alphabet of feeling mouths new words
IV.
Even if your achievements held you in earth’s breath a moment longer,
what did you hope you’d find?