SurVision Magazine
An international online magazine
that publishes Surrealist poetry in English.
Issue Ten
OZ HARDWICK
My Own Research
I've downloaded the app for Original Sin, tracing its proximity and likelihood to infect. I check for temptations and tremors in my endocrine system, measuring the likelihood of replication and reproduction, tracing oscillations in the way that I breathe the old world in and breathe a new world out. The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is tied up in red tape and driver shortages, softening and rotting in a storage facility with an unsafe asbestos roof and security guards who sleep the sleep of the last innocents, but rates remain high and even online transactions are like a game of pass the parcel with a serpent at the centre of the last layer of tissue. Sometimes I feel dead from the fingertips up, but my vulnerability still shows amber due to comorbidity with curiosity, agnosticism, and inattention to the Big Picture. When I Google the Big Picture, it calls up a Flemish altarpiece with an asp, an apple, and awkward nakedness, and when I click on the background it shows a queue of abandoned cars snaking into breath-blue distance. When I click again, it shows a locust locked in amber, and one more click leads to a diagram of the endocrine system. Have you noticed the similarity between the thyroid gland and an X-Box console? Check the app.
Under the Moon of Love
The botanist places love under the microscope while the zoologist places it under anaesthetic. When the son I never had walks full-grown from the sea, he carries questions as if they were a chess set on a moving train, three moves from checkmate, entering the Simplon Tunnel as the lights fail. He sits straight-backed on a stool that's too small for a man of his stature and asks why we place love under surveillance and under strict quarantine rules. So, I tell him about his mothers, each one an artist, with oil-daubed smocks and commissions from famous clients in the world of entertainment: dancers, directors, dictators, and TV doctors, rapping all night at the atelier door until we forgot how to sleep. I tell him how my compulsion to write became all-consuming, and how, once I ran out of paper, I peeled off my skin, layer after layer, so the words wouldn't slip away. He dons a powdered periwig and places love under oath. It tells him about a train rattling to nowhere, about chess pieces rolling on a dirty floor. It tells him about flora and fauna, and about the fashion for leaving with suited strangers carrying portfolios of xeroxed promises. It tells him how, sooner or later, we place love under suspicion, however clean its hands. The son I never had whistles for his sister, who has my mouth and the eyes of all her mothers. There are sheepish smiles all round but I have no skin left for words. I place love under a painted stone so that it doesn't blow away.
Compensation
Have you lost your sense of metamorphosis? Have you lost your present perfect tense? Have you lost the perfect present or the intended recipient thereof? You may be due consecration, transubstantiation, or a free pass for the underground transit system. You may be subject to reframing or restraining orders, while retaining ticket stubs to be shown on demand. You may be a subject or object to be considered down the line. Have you lost time? Have you lost your weight in old rolled gold? Have you lost your sense of childlike wonder and do you wonder what the fuck happened? You may be called in for questioning. You may be summoned for questioning on matters of faith. You may be summoned for questing by a wounded king in a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of the Portal and St Piran in the Diocese of Plymouth. Have you lost your place in the playscript? Have you lost the playing cards your parents gave you, with the medieval castles and cartoon dogs? Have you lost your dog? Have you lost your precious mettle? You may be tested on your memory for movie trivia and translated titles. You may be entitled to reasonable adjustments and acceptable substitutes. You may be misled by mistranslated subtitles. Have you any further questions?
Oz Hardwick lives in York, England. He is a poet, photographer, musician, and academic, whose work has been widely published in international journals and anthologies. He has published nine full collections and chapbooks, including Learning to Have Lost (Canberra: IPSI, 2018) which won the 2019 Rubery International Book Award for poetry, and most recently the prose poetry sequence Wolf Planet (Clevedon: Hedgehog, 2020). He has also edited or co-edited several anthologies, including The Valley Press Anthology of Prose Poetry (Scarborough: Valley Press, 2019) with Anne Caldwell. He has held residencies in the UK, Europe, the US and Australia, and has performed internationally at major festivals and intimate soirees. He is Professor of English at Leeds Trinity University, where he leads the postgraduate Creative Writing programmes.
