Liberty Atoms 11
(listen to the poem, read by Diane R. Wiener)
Birdcaged alarm clock flew
Tick-reversed
An hour pursuant to every ten minutes.
Maisie writhed, forecasted a drum roll;
Squabbled-about lace
Reduced to tatters.
Kalanchoe petals on flung down Riesling
Ordered the tidings:
“Look, there’s a cottage. I can see a light”.
Author’s Note: Quote (“Look, there’s a cottage. I can see a light”) is from Iris Murdoch’s The Nice And The Good.
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About the Author
In 1998, Christopher Barnes won a Northern Arts writers award. He has performed many readings throughout the United Kingdom, including annually at the Proudwords lesbian and gay writing festival. Barnes has created numerous community radio programmes, and has worked in digital film and a broad variety of other arts media shared within collective and solo exhibitions. On Christmas 2001, The Northern Cultural Skills Partnership sponsored him to be mentored by Andy Croft in conjunction with New Writing North. Among his many collaborations, he worked on an art and literature project, How Gay Are Your Genes?, facilitated by poet Lisa Mathews, which exhibited at The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University; the endeavor included a film piece by artist Predrag Pajdic in which Pajdic read Barnes’s poem, “On Brenkley St.” The event was funded by The Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute’s Bio-science Centre at Newcastle’s Centre for Life. Barnes was involved in the Five Arts Cities poetry postcard event, which exhibited at The Seven Stories children’s literature building. He has written for Art Criticism for Peel and Combustus magazines.