The Celestial Set-Up
imagine staring up into an open umbrella
_______________ you’re holding as it pivots
after the defeat after the ruin
_______________ and the flawed reconstruction
________ what’s left but drawing the body into
its own circle spinning around an axis
not like a small country flailing spikes
________ from its malignant crown
but in star clusters
islands breaking into archipelagos
by this I mean a network of events
_______________ or love moving on the epidermis
a crackle on a hand
________ in the small distance unravelling in tenses
between your past and my future
_______________ performing a horizontal music
in relation to the touch of breath
________ or the edge of this poem falling into space
where every revolution is still happening in your skin
when does holding out your hand
_______________ become a question
which way to the centre
________ and how will I know when I get there
when the city is both a practice of scars and
________ a pattern of what’s in the air
in other words in song
an accumulation of detail invisible until you’re dead
for now we wander slowly about the star sphere
________ in a discontinuity that exists as aperture
to defer the sound of an ending not to
________ stop there just look
__ don’t look at the sun
by Zoe Skoulding
from The Celestial Set-Up
publisher: Oystercatcher, 2020