Jacob Burgess Rollo: Four Poems
After John Berger’s Letters to John Christie (1997)
John, How is your knee
after the operation? How
is the baby? One getting
smaller and the other
bigger. A knee, swelling.
The child, receding
like a hairline. A knee
like a cat’s stretched body,
like a prayer mat.
The unborn, adopting
a style characterised by
absence in as much as it
is characterised by
the subdivision of months,
as if time could ever be
measured with a body that
isn’t your own. Does the sun,
as it rises, seem unforgivably
far away? In letters you write
I took Matisse’s observation
that “a square metre
of blue is more blue than
a square centimetre of
the same blue”, but what
did you do with it once
it was taken? Did birds
disrupt the mileage
of your sky? Fish, fucking
it up for the sea?
My neighbour pours me
a pint, because he is also
my bartender. We’ve no
other special relationship.
But perhaps we could
accumulate a book’s worth
about beermats. About
the way the barrels empty
and the pub juts with noise.
The way babies can reach
up to 120db when they cry.
You, hopping to meet me,
on your one indestructible leg.
After John Christie’s Letters to John Berger (1997)
John, I am hyperaware of the profundity of our conversation.
For every seven pages that I send, you
post back just the one. I say, Here’s a scan of our baby at 20
weeks. And expect to receive from you a more
concise kind of child. I say, I’m not sure whose nose the little
character has inherited.
And you say potahto. The germination of tubers.
I know of words denser than
other, lighter words. Like fern, or like swan, like the past tense
of swim. Of a bird. I turned
on the news and the talking head they were interviewing had
something profound to say
about green. Inside his every sentence was another life
sentence. Yes, they may take our lives, but they can never take
our children’s lives, or failing that, our children’s children’s lives,
and so on. This is the law of diminishing returns. Of nesting
dolls. This is what I say when, really, I want to hold you
like a vigil, in which nobody actually touches.
A Taxonomy of Red
After Edmund Bolton’s Heraldic Colour Guide of 1610
It’s arms in red
said but my because
that nothing fantasy every
any else family atom
set it crest is
of spoils there expanding
colours dinner would away
can times just from
be world- be us
used wide a imagine
as seeping red that
heraldic through boar but
tinctures raw running in
if meat free reverse
they like across the
can a a boar
be neighbour field becoming
interpreted peeking running less
easily through so and
and a far less
unambiguously curtain that as
red yes optically it
for its it gallops
example connotations shifts away
looks are hue laughing
great numerous the
on and way
any I the
royal hate universe
coat them seems
of all more
A Taxonomy of Blue
Associated what peeping a
with is safely sardine
serenity left out waiting
low of at in
heartrates the earth its
sapphires sky blue tin
the hue in having
number of association given
9 the with it
because flute sea- a
it the life go
looks cello documentaries I
like the with think
a double the anyone
balloon bass titular using
lifting the whale's the
off organ mini 'posh
a turning cooper wank'
child soft sized excuse
hanging within ticker is
on its with either
just condom acrid hiding
about like mouth- an
the an wash affair
colour astronaut gradual or
of air- blindness protecting
Fridays tight with themselves
and in the from
Mondays their heart their
of helmet of own
personal
disease
Notes:
the quotation from A Taxonomy of Red is taken from https://digitalherald.org/
the quotations used in the John Christie / John Berger poems are taken from their published letters I Send You This Cadmium Red
Jacob Burgess Rollo is a poet from Dorset. His work is featured or forthcoming in The London Magazine, Oxford Poetry, The Little Review, Fourteen Poems, Ambient Receiver, and elsewhere. He was commended in The Poet's Workshop's Poetry Prize 2025.
