Watching an old man talk to a pigeon for company i think about us
Lobsters can live for over 99 years. It’s been proven
they piss out their face, don’t go into shock, perfect creatures
walk claw in claw down a Lanzarote shore.
We boil them, knowing they feel it all, wrap rubber
around their clutching love, boxing gloves
now smacking the pot lid bubbling, a laughing mouth.
I’m sick of feeling devastated by us.
I found a dry pressed fly on page 39 of the poetry book i use
to keep me alive, bowels spread over i / o
o, i don’t know how it got there like i don’t know how
we got here like i don’t know what the word is for to be sat
on the toilet convinced you’ve left a pavement carelessly.
Nana taught me not to romanticise the majestic
heron before you see it gut a fish, peck an eye -
a fox is stealing mini-mouse sandals from no. 46, feet blistered,
leaves wave when there’s nothing even there,
the shop i work at pins them to walls by plastic hook
inventing a garden to sell stacked sunglasses. I’m trying to tell you
i can’t look at anything without the light shaved off.
Every single time i see a butterfly / your stupid face i think
you beautiful dying thing don’t go.
they told me to just write it as i remember
8.37pm.
takeaway boxes down by the bed. straight to it after eating. not much
to say to each other. i’d just left the one
where we’d never run out, terrified of its grounding. fancied myself
a contrarian high-line walker.
T.V on a chair at the edge of the room. over it
we had blathered about whether one should veer from classic dishes on a menu
& try something new / embrace habit.
the phone rang 5 minutes after my last bite of biriyani, pants out my left leg.
if i’d known him better i’d have asked him to touch himself whilst i answered.
heaving a baby observed by cluelessness
in the moments that followed it was unclear who was talking. i thought
there is a reason mother / lover sound similar. he draped a blanket
over my shoulders, tits bare to the right wall.
i hung up confused. 2 months before
dad and I had marched together behind a sign of Boris Johnson’s face
“dickus Populi - the willy of the people.” i laughed
once i’d stopped crying. asked to continue wanting his lips
to do the talking so all i’d have to do was moan at the lightbulb
not think about her voice leaking on the pillowcase
he’s tried again sweetheart, he’s ok, he’s still here
not think about the fact that nuns had it right
dressed in constant preparation for the end of the world.
________
Gemma is a poet, writer and actor. She won the ‘Poetry for Good’ Prize/BBC Words First in 2021. Her poem ‘My Abortion was Funny’ was published in the Verve Poetry Festival Anthology on Protest and commended for the Outspoken Poetry Prize 2023. Other published work can be found in Propel Literary Magazine/AUB International Poetry Prize Anthology.
These poems were chosen by Anthropocene Guest Editor HLR.
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