Will Hall
THE FOUR TUNAS
One is virtue; the other three, vice
With rice; The Albacore I thought I knew:
The Albion I thought I’d recognized,
And had already all but succumbed to.
One is good rare; the rest best buried and
Cooked in nonslick earthenware,
Skipjack; mackerel; auxis; euthynia
Give them thyme, and serve with eupepsi
‘Give a little bit: give a little bit
Of your life to me’ said others in its phaela,
The red-hot planet is deemed Dolphinsafe,
Beata virgo with jus viscera
The first and third inaugurate our calendar-year;
The second and forth crucialize time’s caliper
BEYOND LITOTES
My France-function, my official other,
Let us map the zone of lumens,
The world man-land ratio, that is
My beast, my trapdoor
Oh parlor palm, I see you through a screen,
Through an aestheticist screed.
Tears of disegno,
What will be this weak specification,
This birdlime,
To me, and my enthronizèd ha-ha?
Spencer, get my volvo.
Other Spencer, hit the decks.
Let the King of seepage leave unpointed,
Just for nonce, the orifex.
My fowl wings itself on to too clear day:
A ‘doorwedge’ or footnotes to Chalamet.
DELILAH (SAY MY NAME)
When we first came here,
I used to dance you aspirated
The difference between veux tapier and veux tapis
Ever-forwarding. The only way
To the mind the gym Shulamith,
Literally, a place to go naked,
With weights, the notion of carnam,
Until spicybomb and the journalistic preservation of einfach,
Became themselves the litmus tests of pertinence:
The above remarks are not meant to run down
Alexandre or his partner Alexandra, just to say
That there was a time when
Aspirated differences obtained
And secured us better outcomes in the nous,
We knew how to go to the streets then,
Misjustices were barbasoled while we exercised
Our rites amid the philodendra of youth.
What changed?
Happily a few meters from my place on the lawn,
My pet-prince, your golden bumfur,
You are set out like the thrifty whistleblower
You have always been to me, yuh,
Likin all that is innocent of the dirty
All things small, far from
The bizarre and too mondaine ways of this dancerie
SEFERIADES PRESCRIBES (in memory of Kevin Killian)
It is a passeggiata for the Godlike,
During which unlikely elements will friend.
Rocks boasting from the fish-strewn sea alive to
Our marveling at its prismatic glory,
The fish-strewn sea will heave an icon forward
With the reflections of perfections past,
Then Achilleas will throw himself into it,
Shattering it,
Saying, birds do it, bees do it,
Even educated fleas do it -
It brings a tone of scientific calm and it
Affirms the Ithakans nachträglichkeit.
That they will live to die, not as they fear
They will but as they might — at home,
With a knafeh, lining their barks
With the lining that is the only lining
That will get their seaworthy barks to the home
That every soul one day will call a home.
One is virtue; the other three, vice
With rice; The Albacore I thought I knew:
The Albion I thought I’d recognized,
And had already all but succumbed to.
One is good rare; the rest best buried and
Cooked in nonslick earthenware,
Skipjack; mackerel; auxis; euthynia
Give them thyme, and serve with eupepsi
‘Give a little bit: give a little bit
Of your life to me’ said others in its phaela,
The red-hot planet is deemed Dolphinsafe,
Beata virgo with jus viscera
The first and third inaugurate our calendar-year;
The second and forth crucialize time’s caliper
BEYOND LITOTES
My France-function, my official other,
Let us map the zone of lumens,
The world man-land ratio, that is
My beast, my trapdoor
Oh parlor palm, I see you through a screen,
Through an aestheticist screed.
Tears of disegno,
What will be this weak specification,
This birdlime,
To me, and my enthronizèd ha-ha?
Spencer, get my volvo.
Other Spencer, hit the decks.
Let the King of seepage leave unpointed,
Just for nonce, the orifex.
My fowl wings itself on to too clear day:
A ‘doorwedge’ or footnotes to Chalamet.
DELILAH (SAY MY NAME)
When we first came here,
I used to dance you aspirated
The difference between veux tapier and veux tapis
Ever-forwarding. The only way
To the mind the gym Shulamith,
Literally, a place to go naked,
With weights, the notion of carnam,
Until spicybomb and the journalistic preservation of einfach,
Became themselves the litmus tests of pertinence:
The above remarks are not meant to run down
Alexandre or his partner Alexandra, just to say
That there was a time when
Aspirated differences obtained
And secured us better outcomes in the nous,
We knew how to go to the streets then,
Misjustices were barbasoled while we exercised
Our rites amid the philodendra of youth.
What changed?
Happily a few meters from my place on the lawn,
My pet-prince, your golden bumfur,
You are set out like the thrifty whistleblower
You have always been to me, yuh,
Likin all that is innocent of the dirty
All things small, far from
The bizarre and too mondaine ways of this dancerie
SEFERIADES PRESCRIBES (in memory of Kevin Killian)
It is a passeggiata for the Godlike,
During which unlikely elements will friend.
Rocks boasting from the fish-strewn sea alive to
Our marveling at its prismatic glory,
The fish-strewn sea will heave an icon forward
With the reflections of perfections past,
Then Achilleas will throw himself into it,
Shattering it,
Saying, birds do it, bees do it,
Even educated fleas do it -
It brings a tone of scientific calm and it
Affirms the Ithakans nachträglichkeit.
That they will live to die, not as they fear
They will but as they might — at home,
With a knafeh, lining their barks
With the lining that is the only lining
That will get their seaworthy barks to the home
That every soul one day will call a home.
© Copyright Will Hall 2020
Will Hall is an American living in London. He is also a PhD student working on 20th century poetry and queer theory. Recent poems have appeared in Rabbit, Tears in the Fence and Blackbox Manifold. He also recently had a play performed in Cambridge which can be listened to here.