Mark Bibbins - Sky Lounge

A friend of mine told me recently that I’d most likely like the poetry of Mark Bibbins. She was right.

Bibbins’ poems have a strong propulsive force and surface energy, but there’s a remarkable undertone as well, that things are at stake, as his poems are constantly inventing new ways to get to meaning. Here’s a poem from sky lounge, which came out a few years ago.


Mark Bibbins
Continuity



Why, then, the sun where it should hang at noon
as a TV mother carves a roast for dinner?

And why the crack of thunder hours
before the lightning hits?

Furthermore the whole sky
mad with smoke and ash

from a single tree struck.
Why does he read over my shoulder when

he’s got his copy open to the same page?
As one inhales it’s him

and not the mother
and it’s turkey and it’s frozen.

Breathe out, he leads a song in the terraced
garden, all the girls on cue—but the one

in back is now in front and weren’t
they all arranged by height?—singing, Mother

is it turtle soup again? They scatter when
they hear the caterpillars’

grinding in the trees.