Sam Riviere - Notes on a Text
by and published in Edition Twelve of Pomegranate
He feels a little thinner after reading. He puts down his famous pen
to doze at the library desk. A leaf waves from a far branch.
Lovers, killers, fools, swap bored looks below his nose.
‘A person, perhaps, is just two words sewn shut.’ He’s dreaming
of footprints stopping in a snowfield, a branch extinguished
on a large cloud’s wall. ‘The point where you lift off.’
His face is lit with the blaze of a hundred thousand pages.
Backstage, the print swarms out, hides in other books.
The dead stand up, held by their spines. From the index
of his day, they stare through smoke, the pairs of names.
Sam Riviere
Sam Riviere co-edits the anthology series Stop Sharpening Your Knives. He was a recipient of a 2009 Eric Gregory Award, and is currently working towards a PhD at the University of East Anglia. Faber & Faber published his pamphlet this year as part of their New Poets scheme.