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  • Fissured Tongue Volume 6
  • Poetry Contest Results
    • 2024 POETRY BOOK CONTESTS RESULTS
    • Sublingua 2023 Results
    • Sublingua 2022 Results
    • Sublingua 2020 Results
    • Sublingua 2019 Results
  • The Fissured Tongue Series
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    • Fissured Tongue Volume 3
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Human expression is never orderly.
​It is a space of disruption.To let ourselves express means to be vulnerable.​It means to invert syntax so as to articulate the visceral. 




​​​The Fissured Tongue Series 

Two Poems
 Giles Goodland
​

Picture
Textile Sample Book, silk, 12 1/8 x 9 3/4 in., 1895. Open source from The Met.
No Ideas

For Mahmoud. ‘No ideas but in things’: William Carlos Williams

No day but in the eyes of a boy 
balancing on the line of 
paving that tightropes
him to school. No moment 
but inside the cat whose 
eyes sunder the territory. Ideas 
crack from surfaces, the light 
hinges from a cloud. A rain
bow in the drain, 
a bird speaks its bright notion, 
in its beak it cannot be 
song, it bears too much 
that has just this side of 
occurred: the derivative rain, 
opposing clouds crusted 
over the trees: 
nothing without its idea is 
whole. We meet for coffee and 
talk overflows the table and 
notions flood the street. You are
old, I saw the wind push past you
as it rushed for the next uprising 
in the trees, and you nearly 
fell. Child is running to 
the next day, making up 
time, eyes ahead, like whatever 
floats on wind there is no idea but in 
hinge, no laughter but in 
night no nights but in bars
there are no bars but in songs
we are not the children we 
were but when we were children
neither were we then those 
children. I see you walking 
on the street, man with child
inside. He is light. You are light.



Quoth the Sea

​Beware my kiss among the seaweed stalks
the bone-lace wave
rubbishing among the pools
the whale who booms in to 
bone-bound muscle.

We imagine and then enter it
and fashion the verb into
rim of the glistering forgotten.
Silence is immeasured until 
pointed by braillings of tide-mud.
I watch the rocks weathering your shoes.
This we are sinking in is not sand, not 
sad as silk tears on the swell,
worldclogged water of the eye flows.

The sun under the sea is the sun 
the sea accepts, from 
the seal-swarming 
wave-tilt at breakwater

beliefs set ashore as person’s
realm of ice-cream will melt 
in the hands of error’s comedian, 
addressing stuff of waves, casting aside 
handshakes. Licit strong bonds govern us
but pulled also by underchains, ids,
the sea has a degree in silence 

turns obsequiously
in pragmatic movements, loosening
where language rips other language
apart is where language starts.
About the Author

Giles Goodland was born in Taunton, was educated at the universities of Wales and California, took a D. Phil at Oxford, has published a several books of poetry including A Spy in the House of Years (Leviathan, 2001) Capital (Salt, 2006) and Dumb Messengers (Salt, 2012) and The Masses (Shearsman, 2018). He's currently working freelance as a linguistic researcher. His last book was "The Masses" (Shearsman, 2018). Forthcoming in 2021 is "Civil Twilight" (Parlor Press). 

About the Work

"My poem 'No Ideas' is dedicated to the memory of my friend Mahmud Kianush, who died in January 2021 after contracting Coronavirus while in hospital being treated for leukaemia. Over his last few months we had worked together on his final book, The Journey."
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  • Fissured Tongue Volume 6
  • Poetry Contest Results
    • 2024 POETRY BOOK CONTESTS RESULTS
    • Sublingua 2023 Results
    • Sublingua 2022 Results
    • Sublingua 2020 Results
    • Sublingua 2019 Results
  • The Fissured Tongue Series
    • Fissured Tongue Volume 5
    • Fissured Tongue Volume 4
    • Fissured Tongue Volume 3
    • Fissured Tongue Volume 2
    • Fissured Tongue Volume 1
    • The Fissured Tongue Series
      • Online Issue Two
      • Online Issue One
  • Submission Guidelines
    • POETRY BOOK CONTESTS
  • About Us
    • Masthead
    • More
      • Interviews
      • Blog
        • Blog
      • Resources
        • Writing resources
        • Mile-High MFA
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          • Mile-High MFA Website
          • Faculty News & Interviews
    • Our Contributors
    • Mission
  • Store
  • Nominations & Awards
    • Pushcart Prize
    • Best of the Net
    • Best Micro Fiction
  • The Art of the Postcard
    • About The Art of the Postcard
    • Art of the Postcard Issue 3
    • Art of the Postcard Issue 2
    • Art of the Postcard Issue 1
    • We Are All Artists Exhibit
      • Video Compilation FirehouseArt Center Postcard Exhibit
      • Firehouse Exhibitors 2022
        • Churnage FirehouseArt Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Daniel Staub Weinberg Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Genevieve Rose Barr Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Eva Schultz Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Samantha Malay Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • D Allen Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Hayley Harris Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Tony Peyser Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Sarah Santoni Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Julia Klatt Singer Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Kathryn Kruse Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Meg Freer Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Moira Walsh Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Stephanie Staab Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Anne Swannell Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Laura Knott Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Jo Goren Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • CR Resetarits Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Sarah Ernestine Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Stephanie Johnson Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Charles J. March III Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Emily Mosley Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Grace Desmarais Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Emily Vieweg Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Claire Lawrence Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Meca'Ayo Cole Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Andrea Rexilius Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Christian Garduno Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Salma Ahmad Caller Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Glenn Thomas Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Claire Yspol Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Michael Thompson Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Rikki Santer Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Laura Gamache Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Christine Williams Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Stephanie Beechem Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Imma Dunach Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Ginny Short Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Josh Lefkowitz Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Carolyn Adams Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
      • We Are All Artists Exhibit Guide
      • We are All Artists Submission Form Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit