Mark Chamberlain
Biography
Mark Chamberlain’s poetry explores the mind-body paradigm and male same-sex relationships with a particular focus on domestic violence and socio-political power structures. He has been published in FAKE (Corrupted Poetry), The Financial Times, The Hudson Review (including ‘Snakes’), and The Times Literary Supplement. He can be found on Twitter with the handle @_Mark_Ch_
The Poem
Snakes
after Alberto Ríos
A split column of smoke rises from the lit tip of the cigarette.
Johan has a migration of antelope where his eyes should be.
He lifts the cigarette from the shallow groove at the ashtray’s edge
and the column curls like a mamba climbing a bushwillow.
Outside, the slugs on Mile End Road embrace in idle ecstasy.
Johan tells me that I am beautiful—he tells me that his family
owns ten thousand hectares—he tells me things he tells me
he has never said out loud before—
A common European viper coils in the creases of my ears.
Johan’s aeroplane ticket lies in wait on my kitchen table.
He sets down the cigarette and the column returns.
Two strands of silky smoke diverge
until their kinetic drive is exhausted. They billow and sink.
Our affair is a bush baby in the belly of a python.
First published in The Hudson Review, Spring 2020, Volume LXXIII, No. 1.