2 poems by Luke Samuel Yates

Hotpot

Tom is tidal.

He had too much broth.

The hotpot came with free top-ups

and Tom finished it off.

He can’t drive his car

because of the moon.

He can tell the time

without a clock.

He’s swallowing the rivers,

he couldn’t be stopped.

Maybe we didn’t try hard enough.

Now the mountains are dessert

and yet everything else

carries on going.

The world

diminishes.

I cycle home

past the cranes

sleeping on their feet.

The lights change

on an empty crossing.

Owls

I needed to contextualise owls

so I found a picture containing

a variety of animals among which

owls were included. The forest was full

of these soft, observant beings.

_________________

Luke Samuel Yates has pamphlets with The Rialto (The Pair of Scissors that Could Cut Anything) and Smith-Doorstop (The Flemish Primitives, a winner of the 2014/15 Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet Prize). You can find his first collection, Dynamo, here.