“I always dream of a pen that would be a syringe.” – Derrida

Let the bug that bit
my arm for its hit
end up dead quick
a songbird’s snack,
its sharp gone flat,
my blood one note
from an airy strain
in this bird’s throat
my ears feed back
then around again,
an electrifying vibe
where verbs reverb
and nouns resound
around nerves and
swerve down a line
that runs along my
groovy tongue, my
disc-stacked spine,
to my record arm,
the spindle my pen
and the stylus I am
that kicks or jumps
at bumps for a fix
of a song of a bug
of a jab for an itch
of a thrush, its stab
or this drug which
I pick like a scab.

Ian Duhig’s New and Selected Poems was awarded the 2022 Hawthornden Prize for Literature and his latest book, An Arbitrary Light Bulb, was the Winter 2024 Poetry Book Society Choice.

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