Dynamic Disks, 1933

By Raymond Antrobus
My phone memory is full
of canvases I have cried in front of—
circles, holes—
Shadows on water.

___

was a point you wanted to stay but couldn’t stop floating in the air. The sight of you is a thing I keep orbiting. I was afraid of rejection— knew I’d give it too much meaning, or not enough.
___

Sat in the glossy Guggenheim gallery,
eyes on Kupka’s Dynamic Disks
I began to think of relationships as circles,
the blue/red/white/black spirals imperfect
and un-unioned, obscuring the broken run
of black lines, the way
they break
like eggs, waves, light bulbs, marriages.
Since our separation I have been spilling
ink on lined pages, wondering what stopped
working when the plates were put away and
how many times we asked with water in our eyes
what we wanted if it wasn’t art on the wall
in the house by the sea?

Notes:

This poem is part of the folio “Freed Verse: A Reckoning of Black British Poets.” Read the rest of the folio in the September 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (September 2025)