Banbury, Oxford, Reading, Basingstoke, Winchester
This is the gap before territory,
where, frying onion, you catch
reflections in the steel curve
of the kettle
and I sleep to the sounds
of early evening, drinking
mulled wine from
a thermos flask.
Your Southampton,
more seaside than city, seems
ever-raining – nocturnal – wound
with strangers
and my Leamington stirs
to the steaming of tarmac
and the grumbling of
old bus engines
struggling in the cold.
Josh Suntharasivam is currently completing a degree in English and Creative Writing at the University of Warwick. He doesn’t believe in bios. Then again, he didn’t believe in poetry until a year ago.