The Manor by Ammanford Art

“SHE'S done what?” he laughed at the voice on the other end of the line, I could only guess what the reply was but the pubs were busy and I was thirsty so I didn’t hang around. When I got to the Borough Arms Shelly was serving so I got a pint of Hells Bells and stood by the bar next to Big Dave. “Alright Dave, how’s the training going?”
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There was once a point—not like a point of singularity crushing beautifully down on itself within hungry darkness, though there are troves of truth to that more visible than the light incapable of escape from that singular point, perhaps even more applicable overall;—but, no, this point is like darts thrown at a map and the random perforations it generated, these later marked with push pins and later still strung up with thread roadmapping tangles from point to point, looking more like veins than (perceived) relation between each thumbtack-violated perforation it was supposed to somehow reveal—a point in the stillness of gaps between breath and gasps (not so different after all) that bled like a dull brass polished over and over and over to extract a shine, stripping away layers of (perceived) grime that, by this point, had become true skin.

“Now that we are out here away from the prattle of the city, and have a big yard, we should get a birdfeeder,” said Zania. “Good idea, for once we will actually be able to see and hear the birds, not like back home where you can’t tell a car horn from the brass band at the Pentecostal church. I’ll pick one up tomorrow, there’s a beam right there that we can hang it from, and I’ll bet all these birds that fly past our yard will stop off for a snack,” agreed Jason.

I get it, I swear I do.
A boy is a body into your past,
I smile and my father and his father fall out of my mouth.

I ate the shame around my grandparents' dinner table,
watching small caskets go by through rosy partitions.

wormwood dropped to earth and cracked and bled.
like the sidewalk, and the suicidal head
rolling limp

Don’t let the goat out
that cage keeps it safe.

The man hoped the truth would come to him in a dream. He considered that he had tried to learn the truth many times. He had reflected on what was true of him and settled for that the truest thing he could say of himself was that he was quiet and thoughtful. He was bookish as well but this did not seem essential. Even less essential seemed what he did for work since he had disliked it recently.