Sian S. Rathore

Biography

Relatively new on the poetry scene, but have been writing ever since I was 7. More a modernist / postmodernist poet and scholar, trying to make the traditional seem disorientating and the dull seem colourful. Lover of prose poetry, whimsy, painstaking detail and language.

Samples

Threads Across a Dinner Table First the orange wool, taped to the dinner table long and loose, and when it moves, its every thread is visible; from a dismantled stereo fraying and alive, its purpose to transmit, pulled taut across the chipping pine. The jeering orange quivers - or maybe my eyes are twitching. I am absorbed, I am absorbed by every gentle fibre. Now red; I lift the tape which wears my skin, crude fingerprint, with splinters - and fix her with orange. like an exposed nerve; the violence of a shimmering blood, paddling over gravel, they said it couldn’t possibly all be mine you wouldn’t believe how much a woman could lose when coming off her motorbike It shows up worse in the daytime, each aerial vessel visible; buoyant bubbles stirring with the road’s unyielding rhythm. Finally the pink, as I deliberate her tract - before settling with the middle, and thumb the tape down so hard I almost break my nail; the wool bends like a burlesque dancer’s leg, unbound and blithe, at first but then it’s more the garter, tense around the naked pine’s bare thigh and I dip my eyes to mine: I know what’s underneath the casts arthritic, jelled and stuck I am the parody and so, I weave the threads together. I am as unmovable as the central reservation. But I dip my eyes back up because it’s only when I look away do I catch with ache. Tea and Cakes in the Garden in June A corona deserving semblance flares through a sprig seraphic; ringlet the edge of something crease of a collar the tailor’s boast frontiers a neck the salvo of Summer’s light bluish with the evening starts the assault - begins the injuries. cool the bluish sky unsweetened, impenetrable the passing of time i forgot the edge of the garden it’s not quite so linear you stand taller than you were when precisely when it began. Revelation in Ambleside Revelation in Ambleside - Sian S. Rathore It was the driest of days, it would forever be known as a day so dry that the wood of the pier could ignite into dust with the merest friction. Gloria had arched her back against the rented deck-chair, alone, taking her shoes off to feel the warm sand, to walk across parching shingles, parching and dry, on the driest of days. The sea’s briny taste hung thick in the air, pregnant and heavy with dulling heat, a taste of salted-caramel, and suncream, and an expectation that the sea’s brackish breath should usher in its nothingness and clear her mind completely. Yet, in the seven minutes it took Gloria to walk from the beach to the antique shop she had already considered: perming her hair throwing a surprise birthday party for her brother re-decorating her bathroom doing the grouting learning Russian marrying an astronaut and finally getting round to reading Infinite Jest. Inside - cabinets and book-cases, monacles, tantaluses, knitted golly dolls, hurricane-lamps, the faintest balm of moth-balls - in what felt like the spare bedroom (before she’d had to clear it out for James who’s snoring made her so exhausted she had started to hear noise where there was none). Yet, perhaps this is what led her to the book - sandwiched in-between an Edwardian guide to basic flora and fauna and a Beano annual from 1974. Across The River And Into The Trees, Hemingway; London, 1952 and on the fly-leaf in blue-black ink it said: “June 2004 Unable to breathe”. She remembered Ambleside the months before, 2004, how James had walked the promenade with his eyes fixed firmly to the ground, because the last time he had been he slipped on orange-peel. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again, no, Ambleside was terrible for errant orange-peel. She remembered the last time she had seen him, on the parching shingles and sand, how she pleaded to his sunburnt shoulders: stay, at least give me a lift back home (to the strains of the Wurlitzer, the children laughing on the carousel) I got you an ice-cream. Aren’t you even going to eat it? Five years for this, James. If you go now, never talk to me again. peering through the yellowing pages, qualifying this as, indeed, antique, she inhaled the dusty, dry words as damp marks and grease stains obscured the sentiment - something about Jouet - and on the final page, with the same slant as the first: “Finished July 2004 on my 9th rejection - brackets - for the novel and still unable to breathe” She gave a thought to the failed novelist and wondered If he really had stopped breathing entirely, as she looked down to her swollen hips and to the six months of new life she had so far grown, which gave a pertinent kick. For Our Sins Of brilliance The inexplicable disease Shimmering scars Rotten sovereignty Let them know, as they do Abandon us They were merely Mothers. They were Just Wives, and Husbands, accidental Children. We did not need them. Of decadence The direful grace Censurable sex-tapes Rat-poisoned morphine pills as purple, As purple as the colour Of miscreant coalescence. Let them, as they will, Decry us Nothing more than connecting stars; willingly dead souls, in their nursing void - when We, we were the Moon itself, Glistening in our lunatic splendour. Of pride The cavalier’s vainglory Jejune joie de vivre Banal parades Your dinted crown as pummelled as the fat man’s pop-marked face When he stamped it flat to teach you a lesson Let him know, as he does Turn his wet, wincing eyes to yours Connecting stars poking through a fat, flooding face And you stand here, the Moon himself In spectral calm You won this one. You’d Win them all.

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.

Blog entries by Sian S. Rathore

Paradox (08/02/2011)

Blog link: https://www.writeoutloud.net/blogs/siansrathore

Favourite Profiles

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