WOOL MAN

My superpower would be spotting
Z-twists from a hundred metres.
My costume, a thickly knitted scarf

(the one you won in a raffle); beanie hat;
cable knit jumper; woven blanket worn
like a skirt over trousers, tucked in

at the waist to secure; and those house
socks you bought me for Christmas.
What do you think? Sound good?

Or maybe more than one superpower?
Smoothing slub simply by staring at it,
dressing a loom in the blink of an eye?

Remember how I used to reconstruct
war zones in my breakfast bowl?
Sadly, Cereal Man didn’t gain traction.

And saving a pair of boots from a tree:
unspectacular, which is why they’re
still up there now, even after the storm.

Fabric Man was short-lived too,
swept away with those deft hands
that once grabbed valleys of viscose

from the bolt’s hobbling asymmetry,
the drape tumbling like in a spin dryer,
then measured out by a brass yardstick

set into the bench’s flatland, the silken territory
partitioned by chunky scissors (an inch-snip
then a slice up the compliant cloth’s grain).

I had the perfect childhood training:
swaying hands to keep mum’s yarn taught;
miming the clicking mechanics of knitting;

sliding a Silver Reed’s handle over hooks
and latches to magic up knits in minutes;
sizing jumpers against my back; gazing

hypnotised at the drop spindle’s twirl
as it spun a sackful of snagged fleece
foraged from fields and fences;

touring shelves to the fusty smell
of clothy boredom—the dreaded
threads and buttons still to come.

Oh, almost forgot: fingerless gloves!
These will guarantee my generously
swaddled body will enjoy a wholesale

thimbling while allowing ready access
to the spring-loaded pin that draws
fingertip blood on a daily basis.

DANSETTE

Fine motor skills deliver the stylus to the smooth lane—
a sweet wrapper surreptitiously undone in a hushed cinema;
tip of a fingernail scraping along the teeth of a miniature comb.

The planetary disc spins at my feet, its vibrations travelling
up the bones of my legs, into my pelvis, the ivories
of my ribs, backbone, shoulder blades, jaw and teeth.

Gloss is in fashion again: liquorice, resurfaced street tar.
The world rotates, and things shoot by, nothing stays put.
I grab the autochanger and dangle from it, allowing my feet

to drag through forests, oceans, deserts, gardens; over cracks
in pavements, along motorways, valleys and rivers, cemeteries,
roofs of buildings…then my shoes are torn off by scrub.

A chair is placed squarely in the way, and collisions ensue,
as my needled body—not loose now, but presented stiffly
to the groove—brushes the Earth’s many forms, transmitting

to my ear the grain of things; the seas, for instance, provide
a lengthy interlude of varied sloshing, the prairies an expanse
devoid of yippee guitars, but strung with the thresh and whip

of cornstalks and maize; snowflakes, flower petals and feathers,
all drawn earthwards; confetti fluttering, harp notes descending,
leaflets dropped from aeroplanes, shutters closing for the day.

Greek Key (Meander)

Homage to Etch a Sketch,
plotted in two dimensions
with pulleys and cables
operated by knobs;

master letterform for
rectilinear typographers;
philosophical field manual
(‘freedom through discipline’);

modest border font
for goddess couture;
quiet accomplice
to the invention of trousers;

eccentric algorithm
for robotic lawnmowers;
Pac-Man loser’s
route to oblivion.

Beyond trademarking,
this ancient logo first tagged
the people of Asia Minor
with its right-angled logic.

It then flowed Aegean-ward
to aid gov.gr in extemporising
wildfire prevention laws
that exposed trees to arson.

A labyrinth with no heart,
the route steers the unwary
pilgrim falsely, in eight-bit
sequesters that ape

the Menderes’ snaking improv:
a kind of aide-mémoire,
the trimmings of wisdom
bequeathed to interior design

(eBay has a hallway runner,
sewing tape by the metre,
drapery fabric, wallpaper,
decorative pillows).

It’s how our hands join too!
Not as wrestlers, but as lovers
in a carnal clench enacted
manually by digits mimicking

bodies woven into gapless
fabric interlocks, our wefted
fingers wound together
in a calligraphy of curlicues.

The key’s causal chain
invites a gentle pull to see
reason unravel in sinuous
curves and switchbacks

receding down a basin
of over-cultivated land,
which the clear-sighted
have now cottoned onto;

the agricultural runoff,
tannery chemicals,
alluvium build-up,
these all obey the helical

flow that first gave rise
to the River’s squiggles,
—now depleted and readable
(as was) only from the air,

or via a VR headset, tracking
southeast from Samos
towards the delta wetland
and the plain beyond.

Using basic palmistry
to navigate this corridor
yields a boundless affection
for a river that is defined

by wavering and sifting,
admiration too for advancing
like a child pretend-
swimming in a sandpit.

Clueless, beleaguered,
vulnerable, the liquid flâneur
nonetheless fulfils its nature,
creatively seeking an identity

while the supposedly Greek,
so-called key, for all its fringing,
unlocks little for this meanderer,
it being difficult to pick out.