Shireen Shaikh
Bias
So flat and still the day.
The Norfolk coast does not tilt kindly
but shows persistent linearity
like someone harbouring a grudge.
No blemishes evoke the laying
of a furrowed body to rest,
only dread divides up the field’s conformity
as if to indoctrinate chance.
Vast tracts of sincerity are missing.
The earth does not push or pull,
having lost gravity’s bias,
the seasons have been put in strict crop
rotation.
I came here to recuperate,
to find feature’s face
retraced in the land’s contour
but it yielded not
the hinterland of a suggestion,
not even the glint of irony
on the look of two modern dead birds,
terrible with bright beaks.
what is this?
emotions here
are difficult to come across,
like other people’s landmarks.
not a place
but a map of one
drawn to scale.
Page(s) 71
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