Today we've got two pieces by a new contributor – Caroline Maldonado – a concrete poem and a prose poem. And, in case you were wondering, the tango is danced in a figure of eight pattern.
TANGO IS
is
Tango a
sad
thought danced.
that be
can
UNDERWORLD
A safe room. From here I can see the sky, violet before dawn, and the river, black, sucking up lamplight.
Light from a neighbour's window slips through the slatted blinds and stripes the kitchen floor behind me. Somebody coughs, and laughs in their sleep. The fridge sings and the plumbing yawns like a distant train.
The river below.
*
…air and dust tug it from her fingers: it cruises round Sainsbury's car park, dives under a departing car, where it catches on a wheel round and round and round out to the street, is blown under the 266, under lorries, under Fiat and Mercedes; it flattens, rises again, up over the pavement to slap the lamppost, catch a branch of the cherry tree, hang there one-armed, in the sunlight, waving to the world – it falls again, hovers over guttering until a final gust….
*
Beneath city streets sewers swell, smell of sulphur, tunnel waste. In a rats' playground men build shelters of chipped wood and tin. Bottles and needles are a game for their dogs: tap and roll.
“I've messed up good this time.” He looks away. “Sometimes I feel so sad I could cry. Sometimes, I could cry.”
The train doors open, heave a sigh, expelling breath and passengers – sssh. And then the voice: Please mind the gap.
• Caroline Maldonado lives in London and Italy and has published poems in nth position, Obssessedwith Pipework and The Interpreter's House.
