Three poems

is a poet and writer. Her most recent books are Wild Curious Air, A History of What I’ll Become and Viva the Real, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and the 2020 John Bray Award.

Atmosphere

I can’t wish on stars in unseasonal cold. They’re older than they look.

And they keep shtum in shivery night even when I sneak up on them.

Still they spread a stern and spiky glow on my uneven thinking about how things turned out, horizon to horizon, birth to dust.

All that dust is real, it floats eternally and there you are or will be, or perhaps you were, flickering from atmosphere to atmosphere.

You don’t have to say a word and, of course, you can’t.

I pretend the birds do that for you. I pretend the stars effervesce or mean something like a portent when all I look at is the past while trees are still busy, and the late traffic. You’re going somewhere too.

Fate is a Virus

how my hair has fallen over the world of my feet, over splatter, my pallor, my loves, my cheek

I hunger for undergrowth, unsaved junk mudflats, alarmed confessions, rain as a ghost

feast it doesn’t hate you necessarily

the streets in the suburb are everlooping funkish form fumbles on a twirl, a shame shag

even dogs speak in bitcoin whack modern ecstasies sling round the supermarket from cha-cha palace to bitch slap

online dalliance slopes over conspiracies wish bent leaning into forever wherever the stars went

The Ruins

Poems are separated by wind planets tally matter a thin coat the ruins the door you go through

The loads on a long walk accumulate kerbs full of produce and refuse no modesty about what was once inside

A poem marshals silence on vacant lots a rusty chair burnt records corpses stones

trading or saving what can be brought to our speaking faces