a glowing revenue for the nation's coughers

Read it! This is the last straw! What are we going to do? 
Blistering barnacles, what are we going to do?
—Why Sex is Not Fun, by Captain Overarch Haddock, 1929

fears of a new war between two communities
in the world's newest country
do we care?

life has taken on a lighted character
as though fairies or others had snuck in with tapers
we look and then look again
nothing is easy
in this new light in these times


we drove frantically
I had to be told
rain and dancing lights were everywhere
over there the flat silver line
of Widdop or Gorple—which?
the moors all surrendering to that sharp scrubby grass
the heather leaving for other places
displaced by immigration
a man found headless up here in the peat
the wet old newspaper of fleeting topography

police are treating the killing
(humans can also be affected)

this table this lonely fish
swimming through its reflection forever
what sort of fish is that?
the entire influence of civilisation
from I know these are abstruse extraneous refs
I know I know but the ceiling opens and a fairy reaches in
lighting candles
fairies are huge, not those little things we imagine
they struggle to avoid trampling as they pass by
to their urgent places in the wind
on this occasion all we saw
a vast face that leaned in to light things
before hastening away
leaving our rooms full of gasps

the new infection has been found

at this point
we might need to
(take steps)

.