FragLit

an online magazine of fragmentary writing

::

Solitude

Spring 2010 :: Current Issue

Small Hours: Sketchbook Fragments

Liam Wilkinson

Liam Wilkinson writes, “The following fragments are sketches that I capture whenever and wherever I can—in my notebook, on scraps of paper, in my mobile phone at any moment that may present itself. Though I have a background as a writer of haiku and its related forms, these recent fragment poems are more free, often abstract word-paintings that land as they fall, with few or none of the revisions that haiku frequently demands. They are fragments of day or night, caught in a jar.”

:::

summer breeze
the cool
green shadow
of a blimp

::

memory
slipped into
like a winter
coat

::

where there
should be
something
nothing

::

light from
another room
exciting silence
of solitude

::

the sad
elimination
of years
of dust

::

and so
I return
to this
jazz blue night

::

drifting
sense of needing
to do
something

::

looking
looking
and not finding
myself

::

weekend
no work
to make me want
no work

::

new fences
round old
freedoms
gone

::

silent seaside
grey bare
rooms behind
thick glass

::

outside the shop
yellowed
paperbacks lie
fluttering

::

early
on the prom
a shutter
fluttering

::

Blackpool prom
crash of waves
and last
night’s bottles

::

small hours
a cup of tea
balanced on
a sofa arm

::

dust
on cold
half-burned
candles

::

street noises
climbing up
into this
guest bedroom

::

the book
I’m re-reading
at rest
on the hotel floor

::

dawn light
sitting with me
for a moment
in the kitchen

::

dawn blue
I picture
myself
from behind

::

first light
harbour fills
with tide
and gull

::

tea
in the night
and a piece
of lined paper

::

streaks
of street-lit
branches
in the city night

::

night thinning
to nothing
but the breath
in your nose

::

a grief
for sleep
on your
pale face

::

the strange
animal
of that
wet dishcloth

::

melting
into magnolia
this nothing
doing day

::

room fits
to the flicker
of black and white
movies

::

March
winds
wound around
railings

::

butter moon
hanging
in a fissure
of night

::

the pop
pop of
Bladderwrack
beneath our feet

::

fingering
the oarweed
drying
on the rocks

::

the night
slowly spirals
like a
moon snail shell

::

dizzied
by the pattern
on a
calico clam

::

under moon-
light
her dark
secret

:::


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