New Poetry from David Troupes

As a poet, composer, and artist, David Troupes has scored a hat trick of creative possibility. It was our great delight to publish his poem ‘A Tree Slowly Rots’ in Pulp Literature Issue 25, Winter 2020. To read this haunting piece, which lingers like a smoke ring long after the final puff, order your copy here.

David has gifted us with a new poem, and we are thrilled to share it with you today.

Bones O’ Gold

by David Troupes

The January lacklight,
sleep and its moths, all the bodies

at the turrets, the bodies piled
along the walls. I walk

early to the streets, afghaned in star exhaust
with my aftermath heart.

Is this a forgiveness year? Excellent.
You are all forgiven.

I too: I
am forgiven, and I will stand in my depression joy,

browsing my fingers through this confetti
of world, awake and alive

and alive and awake, a sump
of sunlight,

a fountain
of blackest rebar. 

David Troupes has published two collections of poetry, Parsimony (2009) and The Simple Men (2012), and a selection of his work was featured in Carcanet’s New Poetries VI. From 2016 to 2018 he was Fellow of the Jerwood Opera Writing Programme, collaborating with composer Joel Rust on a science-fiction opera. Cambridge University Press recently published his monograph, Ted Hughes and Christianity. He produces a weekly comic strip called Buttercup Festival which can be read online at www.buttercupfestival.com. Born and raised in Massachusetts, he currently resides in West Yorkshire, England with his wife and daughters.