Poetry by JLM Morton

             ​Christian Collins CC




Redcoat Haibun 

I found it on the mudflats, cast off by the tide. Perfumed with salt and the veld. 

Back home, each time I touched its folds I swore I heard a slither of wool on wool, an opening window and the sound of fife and drums drifting over the hill. 

The crack of a whip. The feeling I could have anyone I pleased. 

It was lighter on than it looked - you could say light as a ghost - but god did it feel heavy as dread when I marched through the territories, rough fibres scratching at my throat. 

This didn’t feel like pride. 

Can’t you see? I called, but no one listened. 

             An albatross flew overhead. 

I was overcome when redcoat grabbed at the supermarket shelves, stuffing our pockets with sugar, tobacco, rice, cocoa, rum, until Security dragged me to the stock room. 

I got expelled for posing as an officer: fucking nutcase. 

I brushed myself off, tried to spot wash the blood-coat with spit on a hankie, made a hash of mending the seams. 

Can it be fixed? I asked the dry cleaners. 

But I knew from the way she slow chewed her gum --

                   looked me up and down. 
                   Love, it’s not the coat. It’s you.
                   The damage is done.
 


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Pig Man Ghazal 

Lodgemore Mill, 1874 - Strachan & Co. to find
him £20 to start pig keeping at 5% interest. The
rent of the styes £2 a year. Dung to be reckoned
at 16/-  (80p) a month, & to go on until the £20
capital is paid… if dung is not enough he is to
​find it. 


They are cleverer than you think, the pigs. 
Learn a command quicker than dogs, will pigs. 

Would you have me sing of some weaver girl? 
I wish for blindness, to wallow with pigs. 

The flesh of gilts and sows is rose petals.
Daybreak disembowels, eats my heart, pigs.

Someday I’ll move to the higher up slopes - 
where the orchids grow, you don’t feel the pigs. 

For what is breath but the movement of air. 
One vessel to another, pigs to pigs. 

Bleed out a universe on a stone floor, 
Skin and split, they die piece by piece, the pigs. 

Call me Pig Man, call me Joe Say, my name - 
see my life ablaze in a stye of pigs.  ​


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JLM Morton’s pamphlets Lake 32 and Sentient are published by Yew Tree Press. In 2021 Juliette was awarded an Arts Council grant to work on a collection exploring the role of trade cloth in colonial expansion. She is poet in residence for Stroudwater Textile Trust in the UK. For more info, see: www.jlmmorton.com

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