The Stack of Owls is Getting Higher

Dawn Watson

• Publisher: The Emma Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781912915323
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

In a sequence of poems set in the mountainous Deep South of America, Dawn Watson vividly evokes an ominous landscape of gas stations, jackrabbits and drifting hawks, where copperhead snakes fall out of branches and 'magnolia cones / thum[p] the roofs' of wooden outhouses. These poems, based on the writer's time spent in Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas, are interwoven with pieces set in the poet's native Belfast which speak urgently to the raw realities of sexuality, juvenile detention, and the Irish border. Many poems feature speakers driving from place to place, capturing the in-between states in which so much of experience is actually lived. Precise and strange images coalesce into physical and interior landscapes. Alternately surreal and direct, and always joyously inventive, Watson offers a clear and unsettling vision of what is and isn't there in these anxious, contemporary times.

Hello, I Am Alive

Hello, I am alive,

although barely,

it feels. Often

I’m afraid of the dark,

but not tonight.

When I am afraid,

I see the girl

from The Exorcist

walking backwards

on fingers and toes

or standing beside me

with a very wide grin

when I roll over

in bed. In Los Angeles,

I jumped,

fully-clothed, into

a deep fountain;

my passport floated

up past my eyes.

When I was 23, I swore

I’d be dead at 24—

you see, I had

a colour dream

about my gravestone

back when dreams

seemed like powerful

launch pads.

Let’s not forget,

losing a father

and sister to suicide

in Russian winter

led Pankejeff to dream

of white wolves

watching

from a walnut tree.

I was waiting for a bus

when a man asked

was there any chance

of a blowjob.

It was like

when fifteen wasps

got inside my shirt.

I stood by a bin

and they thought

I was a pineapple.

The fruit shop

has too many plums

to stack safely.

Are you a boy or a girl?

is the question

I was asked most

as a kid. I

was left-handed

until my teacher broke

his ruler on my desk

telling me to be

right-handed. I

kicked a boy

in the balls

when he wouldn’t let me past

with my Coke.

I pushed a boy

into a hedge

when he wouldn’t let me past

with my schoolbag. I

have genuinely

had enough

ham, I thought,

as I ate the ham

in silence.

Bird murmurations

are the closest thing

we have to magic

or the apocalypse.

I crashed

a snowmobile

into a tree

and white covered me

like a tonne blanket.

My mum shouted,

You’re a lesbian.

I said, I’m not

but I was.

I am.

Fire is wildly

unbelievable

as a concept. I

don’t know why

things take days to erupt

and sometimes years.

I am terrified

in case I go insane

and hurt people.

My favourite insult

is ‘moon cat’.

I need to remind myself

things are solid.

This is a morgue chimney.

This is cold coffee.

These are train tracks.

That is a rope.

I was digging a plot

beside a warm army

of dock lea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Other Titles from The Emma Press
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• How To Kill Snakes with a Slipper
• Peach Season
• The Boxer
• Yellow Punkins on the Oolenoy
• Chicken Wings
• Don’t Shoot, Sir
• Bird on the School Path
• Advice for Campers
• At the Gas Station
• We Can Chat About It by Teletext Which I Know Is Impossible
• The M1 to Belfast
• Heading Home to East Tennessee via the Town of Bat Cave
• Non-Biological Motherhood in Euclidean Terms
• The Sun is One Inch Above the Horizon
• Hello, I Am Alive
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• About the Poet
• About The Emma Press