gareth-spark
Gareth Spark was born in Whitby He began writing the poems that became his first collection, "At the breakwater" (Mudfog Press, 2001) in the late 90's. His second collection "Ram raid" (Skrev Press, 2004) was a critical success. In 2005, he moved to Spain, where he began to write his third collection "Rain in a dry land" (Mudfog Press, 2008), while working in various bars .His short fiction and poetry appeared in Shotgun Honey, Line Zero, Ink, sweat and tears, Out of the Gutter, NAP, Poetry Bus and Deepwater Literary Review, among others. His story "American Tan" won second place in the GKBC International Short Story competition in 2013. The publication of his first collection of stories "Snake Farm" (Electraglade Press, 2015) followed. He reviews poetry online for Fjords Review, among others, and is a member of the Zelmer Pulp writing collective.
In the salted corner of the square,
A small glass door opened to watery air;
I glanced down there throughout siesta,
Anxious at the root of a dry tongue
For wine squeezed from the ochre hills
Behind Cambrils, she sold in empty
Water bottles, a Euro for a litre.
I hurried down through the Casa Gallau,
Quickly as my sunburn would allow;
Dove into light as though onto hot sand,
Around cars that sounded like fire fights,
Squinting in the peppered, robust sun
And in - the old woman waiting, “Adeu!”
Then back upstairs, but slower now:
To watch TV in Catalan; to face
A frying pan balcony;
to get drunk and think of rain.
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 11:52 AM UTC
Fall
Crows dropped from the sky
as though they were cinders
falling from the hot breath
of some dark fire;
The wind was pepper and grit
ripped from the coalyard
and the rust of an old truck.
The
remonstrance of dead things
filled the day so much
that I grieved
a little
for the sun's doomed grace;
and hated the way
an arrow sharp and tin-tasting
season
made me think of you.
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 9:18 AM UTC
Caught in the wet gale torn between the hill's teeth like a final breath,
Corduroy cold against sky and skin,
And the ashes of a fire you thought would always
Burn, left now in the damp and no stars
No anything but the vague sense of something
Running after you like a dog you want to leave behind;
But forgetting always the loss
The light fading on stone
The eyes you no longer remember and the voice you no longer hear
Except as an echo of your own
Caught in the coral cave of dreams that come after
Too much drink and worry and work and too many
Years.
Walking through dust wet with frost, cars slicing by,
And this is all there is, this fading.
This fading.
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 9:15 AM UTC
The barmaid in El Capi explained
How to get to the Roman Villa:
Across the tracks, past hotels
like broken teeth
nibbling ***** yellow air;
Along the loose beach to the far side
Of a river’s still but singing mouth, where
A riot of frogs clicked in the reeds
Beneath a trampling green heat.
We dragged down there one Saturday,
Belly’s empty of all but beer.
You wore damp grey denim and were afraid
To be seen beside the señoras;
Your pallor lurked behind blushed hair
Brushed forward across your face,
And you complained because
You could not breathe and I
Was looking at women on the way.
But you would not remember this day
Now if I were to ask, nor any
Day - so why do I?
When we stood and listened to frogs
that, like you, seek heat
To lay upon a cold heart.
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 9:13 AM UTC
We took the weight off below the pine
On the cool wood of a bench curled
around its rough trunk.
Red dust drifted from the road in clouds,
Like spectres from a battlefield,
And the air above had blanched
In a shrill high noon intensity.
Sweat escaped my face
Like weeping-
The rules of the race had changed
And we two could run no more.
All around was the sound of a child
Crying and calling in Catalan
To its copper-eyed mother
as she smoked a cigarette.
We did not speak.
Between a creak in the branches
And the aromas of flowers and feet;
we had nothing left,
Not even the sunlight.
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 9:11 AM UTC
Ball of bone and feather in the dew,
I surprised you when I pushed the door
For first smoke of the day;
The glass air, cracked beneath your wing
As you hopped onto a wet fence to sing.
And I, without the least music,
Breathed poison against
the morning’s blue wall.
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 9:08 AM UTC
These songs
Were loud last when you were fast
In my days like water in its bed:
Molten light, wood smoke banks, promise that
horizons stand, a far off blue-salt heaven.
I do not know if I owe thanks
For the ache of this recall,
rushing in tides
Across the cracked mud and dross of
Channels that have for years been dry
And which the next hot noon will drain.
I do not know, but I shall refrain
From turning.
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 9:06 AM UTC
A hundred years of the dead;
The new stones, pale as the morning’s bread
And those further back, that crowd below
A deep green shudder of the trees-
Family whose faces we never knew,
The old ones, in pieces, beneath the yew.
They linger alike at the edge of the shore
Where the world of figures and fights
washes to sand;
Where bad dreams are not things we wake from,
Perhaps,
And the second hand can never rush
The morning to your side.
So, they reside:
And I part the blades that shroud a stone
Thinking, for a second, I’d seen your name.
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 9:05 AM UTC
To be allowed to drive forever, through the burns
Of August, pregnant with a dreaming,
Set upon another life.
To drive and not climb from the car, with every
Window wound back into its shell, to not
Think ever of heaven, and never to tell
Pedestrians of the driving.
To be in transit: to be a wing, awake
In smaller shelves of air; to live
As though each moment were its own movie
Screen
And never to regret the faces standing still,
The roadside eyes, the strangers fleeting;
Each foretells a story.
To touch potential that reminds
And shout "Never mind!" as one drives.
To bring beneath the hot blue
A mode of being mindful
Of the lachrimae rerum, and to feel
The sorrow and the thrill of speed.
To never feel the need of feet,
And to watch
Clouds through tinted glass and country turn to run
As you blink against the sun and throw
Your glasses from the car.
To find a country lane, and race
So close to bracken that the dew
Can wash your face, and then slow,
By the heated science fiction of a petrol station
In the grip of yellow weather.
To press the horn and be at last born
Into the endlessness of sky.
To cherish evening as time when seeing nothing
Dies;
To exceed day and to say
"Hello," to women at the roadside.
To see the world as something flying,
Something outshining the hazy study walking
Teaches.
To know you drive beyond the reaches
And to give it everything you've got
As you lean into the wheel and feel
A sainthood in your suntan,
A miracle in the mileage.
To ignore maps, and head for places
Beyond the slightest traces of your former life,
Abandoning self in the process of speed
And accept adventures and sudden brakes
Because you feel the car
outwaiting patience by the road,
And you are owed some living, **** it!
To never check the rear-view mirror
and to slow down as the sun collapses
Worn out on the hills,
Because you never will exhaust
The depths and wonders of this prayer.
To never care about direction, and to drive
Into the night
With headlights blessing every pebble;
To smell the fuel and feel the wheel and
Drive throughout forever.
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 9:02 AM UTC
I finished work and waited for her
With a cigarette, watching an African try to sell sunglasses
to sleeping Irish tourists;
The light was a million needles against my neck
And my beer damp work trousers were
patterned by pale sand blown from the beach.
She walked towards me from the shore;
Her rusty hair writhed in the sea’s laconic breeze,
And I heard blood beneath the waves, and the mountains,
Falling blue to the white waters, seemed to pant beneath
The sun’s arms,
And I felt I could fall too,
Like the sun,
Like the word,
Like the mountain’s peaks.
She paused and watched me, her arms filled with bags
From Suma, and her gaze empty
As a breath designed to hold a name.
Cap Salou cracked like crystal against the air -
I sat beneath a rustling palm
On a stone wall warm as fresh bread;
And thought I heard her laugh.
It was an ordinary day, and I don’t know why
I remember her stood beneath that sky and no other;
As though that moment could stand for all:
A heart without use, blown like the grains
Of dust and sand between us,
Her eyes hidden by distance, growing dim:
White sand, red hair, green eyes,
And laughter.
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 9:00 AM UTC