ſparkles dire

Adam Mars-Jones, reviewing Joseph O’Neill

Don’t do that when you’re dead like this, I said,

Arguably still squabbling about the word inarguably.

I haunt Versailles, poring through the markets of the medieval.

Mostly meat to be sold there. Mutton hangs

Like laundry pinkened on its line.

          And gold!—a chalice with a cure for living in it.

We step over the skirt of an Elizabeth.

Red grapes, a delicacy, each peeled for us—each sheath

The vestment of a miniature priest, disrobed.

A sister is an Old World sparrow placed in a satin shoe.

The weakling’s saddle is worn down from just too much sad attitude.

No one wants to face the “opaque reality” of herself.

                                                                         For the life of me.

I was made American. You must consider this.

Whatever suffering is insufferable is punishable by perishable.

In Vienne, the rabbit Maurice is at home in the family cage.

I ache for him, his boredom and his solitude.

On suffering and animals, inarguably, they do.