A Man's House Catches Fire

Tom Sastry

• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781911027843
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

What to do when everything goes up in flames? Summon up A Man's House Catches Fire, Tom Sastry's debut collection of poetry, with all its elegant, satirical and hurt-quenching power: here are nightmares and fairytales, museums full of regret, mis-enchantments and magic for dark times.

Whilst the accelerants of complicity and violence seep from these exacting poems, Sastry's wit and stoicism slake the bonfire of modern troubles. They defiantly ask us: why do "the great marquees of England" stand empty? How old is your heart? Why aren't we listening to the sea, and what it has to say? Funny, marvellously frank and often courageous, A Man's House Catches Fire urges us to take a long hard look into the flames and avert the disasters of the heart, home and nations that threaten to befall us all.

"Tom Sastry is a magician of deadpan. He's kind of like if the Atlantic Ocean had a laugh track. Terrifying and hypnotic, but also desperately funny. This collection is generous in both its clarity and mystery." — Hera Lindsay Bird

"Tom Sastry's poems stare down the ridiculousness of the world we live in, and offer us ways to carry on in spite of it. These are poems of bright wit and astonishing vulnerability, with one eye always on the future. A Man's House Catches Fire gives us the simultaneous pain and joy of being a human being; reminds us it is marvellous / that it still hurts." – Suzannah Evans

When the light reminds you to look

Man and fire move house

It is the most deliberately violent thing I have done –

punching whatever came to hand

deep into the belly of a black sack

until all that was left

were moths of paper

and rovings of lint.

I hunted them down

throttle-tied the bags

drove to the dump and hurled the lot over the wall.

Then I glanced down at a whole city’s

most furiously forgotten things

to see how monsters die

as old junk.

One thing remained. I tilted my head.

An old inferno dropped from my ear onto my palm

a hot plug of tar

round as an eyeball

red ribbons swimming on its surface.

My reckless fingertips explored its texture

noticed it was cooling.

No longer fire, just the knowledge of it.

I put it in my pocket.

Lazarus

Martha brings me things I don’t need.

The bed is heavy with her cloths.

Basins arrive and depart.

I listen to the soft song of pots and feel her strain.

I dread her questions but also, I want them.

She says What did you see? Mary says

Let him rest. I say nothing.

Martha frets at the clamour outside the house.

She says I killed the cow.

There is nothing for them.

Mary goes to the door. Wait she tells them.

She cuts the shroud into pieces to offer them.

Then they come and I tell them

I stopped but I did not go. Love held me in place.

November

I want to plug my hands into close pockets

and slither in the comfort of weighty coats.

I want hair remembering fire on my pillow

a full measure of night, drenched in black air.

I want to wake, coaxed by light onto my feet

to peer through the draped arms of trees

at the narrowed ambitions of a world

compact as a skull. Now we can offer

the warmth of our bodies as a meaningful gift

let us meet dark change with slowness.

Hanging out with musicians, still in my suit

He said fucking and that was important:

“we’re all fucking broken.”

He said it gently

like a priest, soothing the smart of sin.

I hadn’t heard about it before

this shared brokenness

and it was new to me, this idea

that being in pieces could bring us together

so my mind worked through all the things he might mean

and

like the fourteen-stone word association machine that I am

I considered all the world’s once-complete, now-shattered things

until I couldn’t get it out of my head

that we were broken like jigsaws

fucking broken like fucking jigsaws

and it felt right and wise and true.

I ran

for sixty hours that winter

through streets not made for running

over cobbles

hurdling dog leads

choking on cold air and car smoke

muttering at blameless obstacles

raising desperate hands at strangers

slipping on mulched leaves and dogshit

getting up, carrying on

getting faster

fighting bastard hills with nothing but fury and old fat limbs

breathing out like punctured bellows

fucking hell, fucking hell, fucking hell

a fucking hell made

of rasped lungs and lactic and nothing worse.

In Spring we open, like terrifying flowers

I want wild light without people.

I want to escape the places roads pass through.

I want to wake in a forgetful stupor

and fill my empty head with new and reckless thoughts.

When I return to the city

I want ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Misenchantment
• The unheroic
• When the light reminds you to look
• Catastrophe
• Acknowledgements and Thanks
• About the author and this book