3 poems by Ellora Sutton

Motherless Aura

I go about love like a Hudson Bay Company trapper, furiously starving myself to death on the slender meat of rabbits. Rabbit starvation, it’s a thing—although it’s a misnomer. It doesn’t have to be rabbit, or just rabbit. It can be any kind of extremely lean meat, such as venison, certain cuts of beef. It’s also known as protein poisoning, but I think rabbit starvation is cuter. The more you consume, the emptier you get. You bloat, you distend. The hyperinflated economy of your organs fail, and it doesn’t make any sense.

When I imagine a version of this story

where my mother is alive, she is always

the first to notice that I am hurt. 

I’d still take vitamins, of course, but they would be to strengthen my hair and to brighten my very bright eyes. I’d perhaps be married by now. I’d be very capable and not at all desperate. I’d be a professional with my own apartment in the city, a dishwasher. I’d have very few questions. 

I am an expert in this kind of dust.

CenterParcs (I)

I’m unsure if the forest 

is manmade or natural. 

If it’s in a valley or 

a crater or a quarry.

Everyone is nostalgic

and the deer are so unafraid

it’s like they’ve forgotten 

how to be deer. 

It all feels so veiled 

and on-edge, like a poem

this desire to be held

by anyone 

other than myself.

If you write about this, we can’t be friends.

I have this thing, right, where when a man touches me it’s every man who has ever touched me, all at once. Some hands are bigger than others. Some hands grow bigger over time, burrow deeper, the way infection grows, blooms, spews. Maybe it’s more like a tumour? A foetus? The spewing. I mean: it took a year of regular sex with the man I thought I’d marry for it to be just the two of us in that bed. 

So by the time I’m 28 and a man on a second date puts his hands around my throat and squeezes—maybe as a joke—there are so many hands that it takes months to untangle them, and I spend those months there, right there in that museum where it happened, in the museum, photographing all the signs that say case in course of rearrangement. 

So by the time I’m 28, and my best friend is rolling her eyes, telling me I’m making it awkward because he’s her husband’s best mate, and he’s been screwed over by so many women, don’t you think it’s a bit harsh, is it really worth breaking his heart over; when she says I’m overreacting, he deserves a second chance and I’m not being fair, it was just a joke, for fuck’s sake, he’s been so screwed over by so many women, he’s been so hurt, and he’s dating to marry isn’t that what you want you said you were ready to date again after—. All I hear is good girl, not the kind to make trouble, not the kind to cause a fuss, you are so lovely and kind, such a good girl, you don’t want to ruin anybody’s life.

And I am lovely, and I am kind. But I am also 28, I’m not a kid anymore, I’ve never been more of a person. I am 28, and a man chokes me, and my best friend tells me to shut up, tells me if you write about this, we can’t be friends. 

___________

Ellora Sutton is a poet and PhD candidate based in Hampshire. Her debut collection, Little Bitch is out now from VERVE and is currently on the longlist for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. She is the poetry reviewer for Mslexia.