Three Poems by Kristian Evans

Caravan at Blaenwen

A crying seagull on a flag,
and sea-thrift, and the salt-
crust on a ship’s sail, fresh mackerel
and a string bag full of cockles
your grandfather will cook.

Were you happy, was it good?
Nobody to mimic. Only
the shadows all things carry,
fluttering across the sands.
Run into the wet light, be gone.

Marram grass, adders, lavender, 
the cockles rattling into a pail.
He’ll soak them overnight
in sweet water, just as we soak
deep in the sigh of the waves.

Nettles

i.m. my father Eifion Evans 1956-2022

Someone has gone down the lane,
taken it upon themselves
to slash the nettles back. In the sky
a busy pungent ghost is telling

tales, dumb riddles, breathless clecs
in perfume, the sweet aftermath.
Once upon a time. As night follows day.
How many years now have passed?

I remember your magnifying glass,
pointing out the brittle needles.
I need prayer, solid words to cry, a sting 
to sign. My hand in your hand held fast.

A Photograph of Rimbaud in the Paris Commune Militia

Here we discover explosive and controversial evidence that Rimbaud was radically involved in the Paris Commune … a juvenile figurehead of revolution. 

—Aidan Andrew Dunne, ‘Rimbaud: The Discovery of Two New Portraits’

Easy to smile on a young man ready 
to die in a lost cause – history 
is written in the blood of dreamers.

Imagine a camera at the barricade,
singling him out. That unmistakable 
ruthless hopeless defiant gaze.

How to make a stand among illusions.
Then the years on the run, the blaze
of the African sun burning away

whatever remained. I see him there, soon a student 
of the Qur’an, the spiritual hunt never  
complete and the light shaking him out

for drill and parade, and that one last chance
snatched away. Calculating the losses aghast,
feverish, and mistaking God for the taxman.

Kristian Evans is a Welsh, neurodivergent, working-class writer exploring ecologies and the more-than-human. Founding editor of the online magazine MODRON: Writing on Nature and the Ecological Crisis, he was shortlisted in 2023/24 for the Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year. He has published chapbooks with HappenStance, Unleaving, and Broken Sleep, Otherworlds; and is currently writing an ecological-themed nonfiction book for Seren Books titled Dunelands. He was co-editor of Magma Poetry 79, a special issue on ‘dwelling,’ funded by an Arts Council of England grant. He co-edited 100 Poems to Save the Earth (Seren) and is author of the column, 'A Kenfig Journal', for Sustainable Wales.