Sport 18: Autumn 1997
Chris Price — The Death Words
Chris Price
The Death Words
Starting with
rictus, the grin of the stuffed
museum cat
then rigor mortis, an equally
stringent aesthetic—
all the good latin words
of dr death, o my string bean
—and memento mori
(alas the stone skull I saw
in the shop window that morning
was gone by afternoon)
and me with no more recall
than some spring thing
some dreadful adjective
like kittenish—which ark
freighted that one in
o my sugar snap?
The lighthouse morses on
about unyielding rigours
of rocks as we catch the slow drift in
and out. A miracle the whole thing
floats at all, small wonder
that it sinks, widdershins,
countersensical down
the gaping plughole.
The menu blinks, recommends you save
as all unlabelled do the limbo
filed half way
to Hades, irretrievable
as Orpheus only proved—
the singing heads down-
stream, never to be seen
again, but for print's
angry snarl.