This time next week I will have submitted three poems – alongside a short story and a piece of drama – for the MA. I’ve been advised to be as bold with my poetry as I am with my prose – to be as confident. So I have tried. I wrote this today and as I’ve said before, I am an Absolute Beginner at poetry. I have no confidence that this is anything other than unspeakably awful, but I don’t just want to write and submit something that is ok. I’d rather be bold and fail than be safe. So, here it is. It is pretty rough, I’m going to work on it tomorrow, probably make it longer, but I thought I’d put it up for feedback, however rough that feedback is.
What I See When I Look For You
Your trainers,
dangling in the tree above the pond,
still,
spinning,
like indecisive radar.
Captain America,
face down in the cat litter,
covered in:
plant pollen
human hair
cat hair
textile fibres
paper fibres
soil
burnt meteorite particles
human skin cells
Your human skin cells (citation needed).
A family standing sentry over an ersatz fireplace.
You made a family,
fished out our constituent parts,
you called it us.
Fairy Batman holding a lobster.
Boba Fett wearing Robin Hood’s hat.
C3PO with Yoda’s head.
No,
Yoda with C3PO’s body.
Details are important.
Organic polymers of high molecular mass that will not die,
strewn across unmowed grass.
Statues. Ghosts of Canadian timber porters emerge from the reeds of gentrified marshes and all you get is the rusted scrape of a car mangle with a cartoon imprint of a seven-year-old boy in the passenger door.
The disgusting last days of the Roman Empire, if the disgusting last days of the Roman Empire is every other seven-year-old in the world breathing.
You said is the cat dying of cancer and I said no it’s just getting warmer and then the cat died of cancer.
What The Ladybird Heard
was a crushing silence.
Just Punch The Clock 