New Poets: Eric Anderson

The Granta New Poets series showcases the best new work by writers who have or are about to publish their first pamphlet or book. Today, we publish two poems by rising talent, Eric Anderson, which will be followed tomorrow by a dialogue with previous New Poet, Sean Borodale.

Epic

Wanting to get it all in, like

Xerxes tipping his army’s arrows

with saltpeter

so to ignite the Grecian sky,

I remember the shock of grass

and early bulbs.

The surfacing of winter

sparrows long buried, having burrowed

under the brook ice.

evening and the sound

of engine shot.

Trying to hide

my father’s hunting knife

inside the piano body.

Composition for a Synthetic Blend

Bed in a white room, headboard
to the west, mattress

stuffed with wheat and oat straw
perfumed with balsam, linens

rolled in resin and balm.
In his wife’s place, a timber note:

cedar wood, oak, silver pine, and seed.
A thether if only for a finite time.

The perfumer working in the hours
before morning

will warm the space
making his solutions useless.

What else?, he asks, pressing glass plates
against a layer of leaves

so their essence will fix
to a glaze of animal fat

What else lingered as you passed
those last days refusing to leave this room?

by Eric Anderson.

Image by Hitchster.