The Ofi Press Magazine

 By Kim Moore (UK), published in Issue 17

The Master Engraver

Let me tell you of a man called Graham Short
who can engrave the Lord's Prayer on the head
of a pin, who cut the words Nothing Is Impossible
on the edge of a razor blade, who wrote the names
of the thirty eight England World Cup scorers
on the bottom of a football stud, who waits
to make a single stroke between heartbeats,
who works so slowly, so quietly, that when
the mice come, their footsteps cause a tremor
that can obliterate several words.  Watch him
late at night, when the lorries don't run,
his solitary light shining for as long as the dark
holds the city to account.  This is the way
to slow down time - sometimes, he says
he thinks he's made it stop - his engraving arm
bound with a luggage strap so only his fingertips
are free to move, his stethoscope now warming
on his chest, his resting heartbeat thirty beats
a minute, his skin stretched tight.  This is his covenant,
his ritual, this working through the night.

Kim Moore is based in Cumbria in the UK.  She recently won the 2012 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition and her first pamphlet will be published in May 2012.  In 2011 she won an Eric Gregory Award and the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize.  She has had poetry published in Poetry Review, The TLS, Poetry London, The Rialto, Ambit and Magma and her reviews have been published in Mslexia, Staple and Poetry Review.