Oliver Dixon

QUANDARY: A QUADRINA

Ever feel yourself porous, riddled all
over with absences that render you see-
through, open to the raw? No solid edges
between your body and the invading world?

Are you less and less tethered to the world
each autumn, more disembodied and feint, all
pliant and complicit with the high-pitched edges
of the gale? Are there dreams in which you see

yourself the prey of creatures you never see,
metallic ticks and nano-mites gnawing the world
to a shell? Do you feel you’re ceding all
agency to a feigned voice at the edges

of your attention, no secure edges
between your mind and the virtual world
seeping in through devices we no longer see
for usage, haptics? Dawn-waking, are you all

scattered out across the gauzy fields, your world
fraying and unthreading at the edges?

Oliver Dixon is a poet and writer based in Hertfordshire. His first book of poems, Human Form, was published by Penned in the Margins and his non-fiction book, Who the Hell is Friedrich Nietzsche?, appeared in 2019 (Bowden & Brazil). His poems and reviews have been published in PN Review, Poetry Review, Tears in the Fence, Poetry London, The High Window and The Wolf. He works as a teacher for students with complex needs and as a Creative Writing tutor.