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'Honeywell', a new poem by Rowan McNaught

by
June–July 2019, no. 412

'Honeywell', a new poem by Rowan McNaught

by
June–July 2019, no. 412

In a hallway with the door open, a Honeywell T87 will attempt to
equalise the temperature of the continuous (available) world. It sits
between the mirror-dresser and the coat-hook which resembles two
of four talons of a lived-in bird, like a Fiji or an Imitator goshawk.
The Honeywell has the brain of a bird but no mouth or Nest.
In this arrangement and when you’re cold you might catch sight
of the consternation of yourself in the mirror-dresser when you
run around the corner of the living room to adjust the temperature.
At least. Or the top of your head or your apparently open mouth.
What you can’t see is the outcasting belly of the change in the air
as it flushes through a white flyscreen: the plastic or enamel white
an extruded quatrefoil egg which flauntingly comes off in drying
and which the Honeywell is doomed to face. If you could see
the change in the air, it’d spill like the extra-amniotic puff of
the wind in 1362. The thermostat is a lens perplexing the evidence
of environmental warmth upside-down and inside-out and dreaming
and as percussive as the feet of the continuous (available) world.

Rowan McNaught

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