Quadrat
Half of us she sent with Mr Frederick
out onto top field, armed each
with one of those six-inch plastic squares
you lay on the ground to frame nature with,
and instructions to find whatever was alive
within our patch and describe it,
starting with the grass, then the dandelions
like lampposts in the fog, then – a yelp –
ants like stitches in the world’s scalp.
Fifteen kids parting the grass, while
inside Miss Sanderson passed around
a mini jam-jar topped with a hairband
and a bonnet of gauze and asked us not
to shake the beetle parked inside,
but observe it from every angle –
its shell a bead of banned nail varnish,
its underside through the glass dark
and complicated as the stomach of a car.
Then she sent us out to find our own,
anywhere between the brook and the road
and the fence where the two teachers sat
not talking and watched their two teams
of searchers: Something Everywhere
and Everything Somewhere
we were called. They were sleeping
together, was the rumour. I don’t think
they were not talking about love.
Washing with a Plastic Milk Bottle
in the Nameless Stream
where the streaming light is the milky water
in the bottle I’m washing out first
before washing myself, I remember
my parents used to wash me like this,
with a jug, in the bath,
from a height I can’t reach
now the arm is my own. I’d tip
back my head and open my mouth
to the stream, like I tip back the bottle
and open its mouth
while it fills with cleaner light: base,
then the hollow
of its arm – such self-possession
to have what you’re held by
be your own flesh – then up to the lip.
Starting to wash, I let one hand
linger on the crest
of my hip, as if to bless
the impermeable skin, and, akimbo,
admonish the world for being outside.
Standing, I face down
stream, and wish myself
milk bottle: for the flesh of my palm
to open like half
of a promise and meld and be porous,
like the cool hand of the delta rests
on the land and weeps in nutrients.
The Mackerel Past
The promise the full house on a line
unloseable lucky-dip no-sport-in-it
slashed sack full cloud flashing fat
rain in a wet country like emptying
the bath with both taps on stealing
from the boss paste jewels coloured
glass don’t-even-notice slick mosaic
tessellated path walk-across-the-lake-
on-their-backs the silver-black white-
spark water like a washer full of socks
the bet-your-last fishing rod dodgem
tails sparking on the sky the shoals
wear gulls like hats like midges dip
your hand and come back thimbles
rigged tombola boat listing low-ride
roped dog trying to piss and walk
________
Ali Lewis was born in Nottingham in 1990. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2018 and his pamphlet, Hotel, was published in 2020 by Verve. His poems and short stories have appeared in magazines including Poetry Review, the London Magazine and the New Statesman. He is a doctoral student at Durham University.