DS Maolalai

Quarterly building review

lightbulbs cracking
open like so many
oysters. a bin at a sea-
food buffet. if I were a teenager 
living here now, I suppose that I’d also
break buttons. the locks on the front 
doors don’t work and the fire
extinguishers have long become 
decorative, used up as tattoos
and as dangerous. inside the drywall, 
damp moves its hands 
like an octopus under a rock 
and the overhead seagulls
have made hell as well of the gutters
and are pulling out wiring.
the monocouche wrinkles
to sunburn, old leather and coke cans. 
I calculate budgets, make 
notes and take photographs. 
list various things we can’t do. 

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A cube of the night

rain falls at angles
and lands on the windowpane 
in a series of sloping cat-
scratches. inside the extractor
fan hums and its light casts
a warmth across everything; pots 
boiling over and scorch marks and
everything else. my stove is a pattern
of overlapping circles; a map of the orbits 
of planets in burned soup and black. 
and my house is a cube 
of the night sectioned off
from the night by a thick growth 
of ivy and walls 
and a manfully struggling 
lightbulb. the world
is outside 
and it’s terrible. 
and in here it’s terrible 
too in a manageable way. 

 

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DS MAOLALAI has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent”. His work has nominated eleven times for Best of the Net, eight for the Pushcart Prize and once for the Forward Prize, and has been released in three collections: Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016); Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019); and Noble Rot (Turas Press, 2022).