Catching up with our podcast back catalogue.

Although we've published the texts of these three poems by Helen Pletts before, we've now got audio recordings of Helen reading them aloud. So, as part of our podcast programme, here are the words – and the sound…


Bottle bank
 
A lean-trousered scrabble;
Pressed aside the green-breast-curve, toe-tipped
Arched form a-gape-reaching,
Visage-crimson-cold.
A jagged white slit creases the cheek;
And the human bright-blue-eye
Echoes love lost, the pricelessness of heart;
Scattered, like the glass shards
You hopelessly filter. Your stick twists
But it won’t stretch, nor grasp without prehensile
Tendency, the bottle's neck.


Travelling
 
You have been travelling with me for decades;
even before you were born;
your toothbrush next to mine in my suitcase,
the bristles damp from the cold water in our last hotel.
 
I tipped the porter through your fingers;
your napkin wiped my lower lip;
clean, white linen you had straightened
by your plate at dinner.
 
There was a fold, a crease in the napkin,
like the gristle-spine of a chicken carcass
springing at my touch; indelibly pressed into the fibres,
like my laundry tags with your name on.


Sellotape
 
It’s up to you whether you curl up on me and
twist again;
 
taking so long to let me scrape my nail under your tail,
wrapping up against me

leaving the sharp adhesive scent of you on my hands
that gets stronger with every pull.
 
And stranger than this,
even though I try to deftly cut you up into neat strips,
 
you want to hold on to me;
every trace of me, becomes you
 
in your glistening strip, as you isolate and snatch my fingerprints,
decoding me.