Introduction: Roddy Lumsden

Sulphur, globster, stinkhorn, horse & brie: on our first night together, I held off wolves. Since you ask, lass, if you're to join me in a little sinning, we have missed the thaw by days. Lindworm, Tatzelwurm and yeti, Roddy Lumsden's poems stroke your bible head, make your madness better. In this ugly pieta, he writes, I splashed on Gio, creased my 615s & the celtic serpent tattoo twists all over the pale force of her body. It's difficult with both of us seeing people, bracing to pull hot wax strips from your calves. You who thrived where the horse trod until, sleepless without you, I whispered this. These beer tins, deer scat, thrawn branks, and her well-thumbed copy of The Joy of Sex. While their mother is out on rooftops, mapping the stars, they must, since we must, have the sound of rain, of the silent film of me. Faint heart, fair maid, and all that jazz. Scallions scowled in a jelly pan. The long cosh of a thaw? An advancing swarm? I'd mope but I could live with that, the malt musk of Laphroaig about her mouth. These dog-watch dalliances, these matinees, Roddy Lumsden's poems record rain at night, biscuits crushed in paper pokes at Xmas, cryptozoologies. Or else I imagine Judas, a keek of Rauschenberg's stuffed goat, Mid 1990s, Scotland, dead of winter. When my ex-wife found magnetic north in my sock drawer, you poured a pale sky down. Because even minker's bairns have angelwings. Roddy Lumsden.