Young Poets

Notes on a Harvest

I.

I am not the child you wanted.

I am the seed and the apple too. 

the call                                  and the response. 

your baby 

                                    by any other name. 

your daughter, a thorn in your side. 

you do not love me the way you were meant to;

as bone loves muscle.

unconditional and saturated.

stewed and resin-sticky.

I am not the harvest of your waning body

but a phantom limb

still itching.

II.

do you remember the deer on the A418?

your mother was dying 

so we made the drive to the coast.

she was waiting there,

unfurling at the tide line,

her hands coming into their final position – 

open, a greeting,

waiting to receive fruit.

you were distracted and unkind;

your cheeks dilated with March roses.

we watched the doe,

a stalking flame,

bright and then

snuffed out in your headlights.

you pulled over as she flickered by the verge,

holding against the wind.

you couldn’t drive on,

couldn’t watch an animal suffer –

for something to be right

it must always be done by your hands.

you taught me this long ago.

and now

you will not break bread with me.

you say I look more like my mother each day.

am I only perfect in the throes of your memory?

where I am boyish, enshrined and ruddy,

dulcet in the sea air and sifting through shingle,

in search of hag stones and wishing rocks

to knead and palm until warm.

III.

you grew up at the port of pilgrimage.

you learnt to drive at fourteen, thirty miles from Mecca.

you spat the pits of dates into your father’s French tumblers,

then took your mother swimming in the red sea.

the sun has always looked good on you,

like Indian cotton, and wingtip brogues.

but now you have nowhere to return to,

no stove, no mantle, no charge to feed or water,

no holy step to sling your hook.

                whose halls will you haunt when I’m gone?

and I see you now

still – 

the ironed creases of your trousers dulled by blood,

unpicking knots of flora, fur and shrub from your fingers.

you leave her, still hot, behind a hawthorn,

neck flung back to a stargaze.

you return to the car,

and wipe your hands of it all

again.

The Fledging

That summer things were different.

The heat came early and you spent nights

thin

and

bird-like

sheltered by the cool crag of my body,

sheetless and whitely shocking

against the June hue of my arms.

We were sisters then:

we had never worked a callus to an even grain,

still found homesickness in the

lavender scented sachets of our sock drawers.

It was all knees and elbows

and hard edges beaten smooth by Suffolk winds.

We grappled and pushed but only when the landing was soft,

when a clover dusted lawn held us in repose.

We never let ourselves become strong enough

to hurt.

But you dragged your feet into winter,

lost your fledgling down for the thick pins

of early feather.

Life began to treat us a little better

when we loved each other less.

The faint impression of grass on the back of my thighs faded.

Now our jutting bodies no longer call for each other,

our wings twitch at the sight of an open door.

The last time we spent a night

laughing all the way to our molars,

you left three red hairs in the twists of my pillowcase.

I pressed them to a braid

and took it to the hollow of a felled tree,

freshly weeping idle sap.

I prayed in my own way:

for your parents to live until they are old,

for you to love until you are able,

and for the sparrows to take this auburn thread

as an offering for their nests,

to tie and untie as needed,

as promised.

play me like a piano

squiggly hooked lines
crawl across the yellowed,
crumpled sheets like hesitant
fingers on out-of-tune keys,
forming and deforming words
of a language neither of us
speaks

there is a little hiding spot
between the G and the G sharp,
the singular subspace in
which your hand reaches
for mine, touching, ever
so slightly

I want to switch octaves,
hell, I want to change keys,
but my limbs have become
heavy and you are the dux
to my comes, the kanon
to which my hands kneel
in this punctus contra
punctum

you are the stinging
on my tongue, I swallow
but it lingers, settles in
my throat, now trickling
down my spine, my nerves
are on fire: I am alive,
I am alive

there is peace to be found
in the silence, in the stretches
of empty space between
one dusted chromatic note
and the next, in the negative
of you whose melodic inversion
is the blooming of something
new

Big City Dreams

eye to eye with the singular familiar
Eye of this otherwise nameless city,
bright purple star in the distance

the bridge’s excrements are pink and they shimmer
“Talk to us, we’ll listen” so when I do glance
at that luscious body of water (is that really
all it takes?) so immense I for once
feel almost-skinny, I make sure
to appear inconspicuous

6% battery but I’ve memorized my way —
Regency, Chapter, Regency, Chapter,
none of us notice red light turn green,
lost in blue screens, now it goes 10- 9- 8-
our impending doom is orange and it flickers
and it’s impossible to unsee: there is no
escaping this 3- tire- 2- some 1- faith

the stars are vibrant as ever and made-up
of spiralling street lanterns, of tall buildings
that stand a touch too still, of a stranger
that actually grins at me

or was that just the moon? I decide
it does not matter, as long as I’m convinced

I never am so I spend my final three percent —
Chapter, Chapter, Chapter —
on checking your location for the 23rd time:
we’re 20 hours, 44 minutes apart (little
traffic) and you haven’t moved an inch

for ease of calculation I equate your phone
to your heart (we shall call it The Assumption
of the Modern Age) and decide that you still love me

still, I picture it: the final plummet,
that inevitable plunge, sweet water
that swallows only once, calmly
or, on a slightly different night: I don’t check at
all and the motive for lingering at each traffic
light is simply to drag out this silent
night for just a little bit longer

dear friend, when you picture
me picturing the final act,
picture me smiling