By Nick Laird
More than ample a deadfall of one meter eighty to split
my temple apart on the herringbone parquet and crash
the operating system, tripping an automated shutdown
in the casing and halting all external workings of the moist
robot I inhabit at the moment: I am out cold and when
my eyes roll in again I sit on the edge of the bed and tell
you just how taken I am with the place I’d been, had been
compelled to leave, airlifted mid-gesture, mid-sentence, risen
of a sudden like a bubble or its glisten or a victim snatched
and bundled out, helplessly, from sunlight, the usual day,
and all particulars of life there fled except the sense that stays
with me for hours and hours that I was valuable and needed there.
Source: Poetry (September 2015)
Poet Bio
Nick Laird was born in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. He writes poetry, fiction, screenplays, and criticism, and lives in London and New York.
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