Like a light bulb



Her long term memory is a bit of lead piping,

one that you can protractor along to the point,

to the pivot of the day shifting from am to pm. 



She dreams she swims underwater saying things,

but likes looking down a smarties tube and seeing

the lawn and her little brother



in a photograph flying up out of the paddling pool

his feet half in air, his hair like static,

nothing much makes sense.



She knows there is logic, brain mathematics -

whole glotteral snooker balls of evening events

that hide themselves under brain duvets;



a table top scattered with toast crumbs,

a beach bag on the bonnet of a car,

a nose piercing next to a pit bull.



The rings on her fingers are planetary pulls,

people tell her where things live,

her pyjamas under her pillow



her shopping in a basket

her heart not a pin brooch

her panic not what people appreciate.



Her boyfriend holds her hand in the cinema

and in the dark she swings her foot

Alton Towers across the carpet.



She thinks a lot about re-starting

about planting the things she likes

about choosing how to react



to strangers asking questions,

the am pm pivot

moving like it's meant to.



* Hannah Jane Walker is a poet serial apologist. She studied literature at UEA and a poetry MA in Newcastle. She has worked as an editor and education facilitator and is working towards her first collection ‘You interrupt my brain sweetheart’.  She has performed at events and festivals around the country including Latitude, Truck, Norfolk & Norwich Festival and Shunt. Summer 2010 she took her first solo show ‘This is just to say’ to Edinburgh as part of Forest Fringe.