Bruce Robinson

THE UNINVITED

Tonight the same old story,
that lapse of water that's

always there, the waves that offhand
feel you up, you're an upland

intruder, it's a half-cocked sea,
there are words we have to fight for,

or do without.
They rub each other out,

or tell their separate story,
the leaden slowness

of the words' arrival,
dead letters, watermarks,

dark growths, palimpsests.
They come from difficult places,

they're babbles of shades on a screen.
A cheek, her cheek, twitches beneath

the skin in the room
without a bath. They have

skin in the room. A page
turns. Bones frame a chin.


Bruce's YouTube video reading of "The Uninvited":



Subscribe and turn on Notifications for Channel 52.


Bruce confesses: "This poem began with having watched some Bogart film, years ago, something about "Fleming," and, more recently, winnowing through old papers, trying to shred whatever I could, came upon something that was almost a poem and felt as though it could be turned into one. Sort of a cold case. It's not always clear whodunnit."

Recent work by BRUCE ROBINSON appears or is forthcoming in Pangyrus, Maintenant, Rattle, Spoon River Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, Evening Street Review, and Seventh Quarry. He last appeared in The Five-Two at the tail end of 2019.

Bruce Robinson

ALEMBIC

It’s raining. It’s pouring. A car is
idling beside a swamp field
somewhere beyond the turnpike.
It has no lights, but there’s smoke
from the field, smoke from the exhaust,

the smoke is visible

even without the light of multiple impressions,
the trunk’s closed, it had been open,
now it’s closed. You’ve got two guys
standing around, their boots staining in the marl,
they’re watching without much interest
the last bubbles popping from the bog.

One of them coughs.


Bruce reads "Alembic":



Subscribe to Channel 52 for first view of new videos.


Bruce confesses: "Most of what we read about Iron Age cadavers who apparently met violent deaths describes bodies discovered in the peat bogs of northern Europe; I’ve reconfigured the ritual as covert disposal of a corpse in, go figure, New Jersey. Far less romantic. I’d read about bog people well before the PBS documentary, yet the idea that many bog bodies are well preserved never bothered me as I buried my own. I guess if a body’s not discovered, it doesn’t matter that it hasn’t decayed."

Recent work by BRUCE ROBINSON appears or is forthcoming in Mobius, Pangyrus, The Menteur, Connecticut Poetry Review, and Common Ground.