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poetry

Between the columns we reckon with it all

Pembroke King (author)

Pembroke King

Pembroke King is a writer and poet from Massachusetts living in Amsterdam. Her work explores the nexus of nostalgia and the surreal.

Published 06 Sep 2023
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Watching colossal ships trudge forward towards open water. Tugboat sentinels spin and ant men run laps across the upper decks. Trying to wave to one of them, to be seen.


If there was ever a threshold, where things slipped through, this here was such a place. This threshold is a desolate one.


The clang of bridges falling and powder ringing
Towards the singing and the dancing
Somber sonics pushing gas masks in the fairy terrain
All metal and grass, golden hour reeds upon the canals

North Sea winds making small gods of us all

Fates of production haunting mossy brick
A coliseum for what was and what may still be
A clock tick ticking in soft limbo source code

Watching grapefruit juice trickle down your chin
Acid tears to match the poppies bursting below

Towards fever dream meadows the trail winds
A sea of copper roses wrapping rusted hills
Giving way to spires of pine eclipsed in the marrow
Mill your wires of honey and wash your hammers of dew
The factory of few awaits

A great cavern of bygone industry and stone
Pumiced anew to greet the brooding dawn
Neurons drone down pathways of mist
Gossamer fawns growing into antlers of fern
Writhing and churning in this unknown chamber

Skin melts away to slick cobblestone and slime
Biking to and from the hard-drive and the palace
Here you meet God or yourself, but never both
Hurtle forth and let yourself go circuit-blind
No need for malice in this divine kingdom of green

Today boats from Liberia and Hong Kong. Tomorrow, who can say?