The Friday Poem: A poem from ‘Reproaches’ by Steven Toussaint
(Photo: Getty Images)
A new poem by Ockham finalist Steven Toussaint.
from The Reproaches
Confusion isn’t mystery.
Oblivion and mastery, but never
At the same time. Abide in me.
Fustian bargain to render silence clever.
Ignatian composition
Spoiled by an app’s trill, my fontanelle
Closed and with it one grace-receptive station.
So I rode my bike to Gog Magog Hill
Where I could better imagine
Three standards at war inside myself
Incarnadine the chalk desolation:
The Ghibelline, two kinds of Guelf,
Evidence upon evidence
The spiritual direction industrial complex
Had auctioned my data for pocket pence.
First edition Eeldrop and Appleplex
And selected Roman broadcasts for a song
On Amazon Prime, whose algorithm proves
That Augustine was wrong
To blame libido for his mental mess. Desire behoves
Meticulous code on a Palo Alto laptop.
The engineer, adept in Ent-bildung,
Empties his drives of anything de trop
Like an outbreak would the Addenbrooke’s building.
Steven Toussaint’s collection Lay Studies was shortlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the 2020 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Winners were announced on Tuesday May 12. A full list of the winners is here.
The Friday Poem is edited by Ashleigh Young. Submissions for The Friday Poem are welcome at thefridaypoem@gmail.com
Steven Toussaint
Steven Toussaint is the author of the chapbook Fiddlehead (2014) and two poetry collections: The Bellfounder (2015) and Lay Studies (2019), which was shortlisted for the 2020 Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry. Born in Chicago, he immigrated to New Zealand in 2011 and currently lives in Cambridge, England.
