Running on Sand
I want to tell you / I’ve learned how to shorten my stride / a lengthy gait could never work on this shivery terrain / do you remember it was you / who first brought me here? / I make my own trail / stay in my own lane / I let the miles scatter / their loose grain either side / am I running from or to? / life has become layered / parts of me are too jagged to slip through an hourglass / once I tried when bored and alone and shyly at dusk / to look you up / a small part of me wills / a set of parallel footprints / wants to watch them bounce / a well-known rhythm / leave little open graves for me to fall into / on the second lap /no one cares but I know / I can’t wait for you / I can’t run on sand with you again / the slanted rain on my back is a psalm / my feet fall like droplets / I run doused / I run baptismal / I run wide.
Elisabeth Sennitt Clough is the author of Glass (Saboteur Best Pamphlet Award), Sightings (Michael Schmidt Award) and At or Below Sea Level (PBS Recommendation). Her poems appear in The Forward Book of Poetry 2018, The Rialto, Poem, Mslexia, Wasafiri, Magma, I,S&T, The Cannon’s Mouth and Stand. Elisabeth is editor of Fenland Poetry Journal. @FenlandJ www.elisabethsennittclough.co.uk @LizSennitt
House Clearance
The hulking frame of the piano will not budge –
it takes three men,
a door, unhinged,
a dislocated carpet,
a lot of sweat and swearing,
before it rolls into the van.
You do the math(s):
If it takes three men
forty minutes
to move a piano,
how long will it take one man
to shift the memory of your face?
I’ve burnt so much dead paperwork,
removed box after box
to tip or charity shop,
but still you’re everywhere…
what will it take?
The cats observe me stoically –
they do not want to leave this place
that smells of them, and you,
but I’m choking on the dust
that I’ve brought down from the loft,
my eyes are sore
and there is always one more case
to be revealed, unpacked, repacked,
dinner to make, and calls.
I am too bulky for this life –
you seemed to make
this awkward shape
fit.
David Van-Cauter’s pamphlet Mirror Lake is published by Arenig Press. He was runner-up in the Ver Poets Open Competition 2019. He is a personal tutor based in Hertfordshire.
Refurbishment
mum says there’s that generation
that covered everything up
floorboards fireplaces and now
it’s like anti-clockwork
searching for original décor
I am moulding wet clay
into figurines in an unofficial
online art class in an unofficial
living room I underestimate
an old match box now
they are running down
the fire escape I am left
putting on my communion dress
and waiting
Niamh Haran is a queer non-binary poet based in London. They are an English Undergraduate at King’s College London and are a Roundhouse Poetry Collective member. Some of their poems appear in Perverse, The Interpreter’s House, Babel Tower Notice Board and Abridged.