Syncing
Sometimes it feels near again, when I jump and mime alone
in my apartment to Taylor Swift, after an hour on my upright bike
high on sweat and night through open window, gulping water,
filling a void, thinking of new-ironed pale-green bedsheets,
but first a steaming shower, orange gel that was 60p in Aldi
and is perfect, its clear bottle a fin of some epic golden sea beast,
and here, in this numbed, spent, damp state, I descend
to the maze-centre, like in Pan’s Labyrinth, a place locked to me
most of the time, and here you meet me, my faun of sorts
built from forest, a powder of moths fleeing my stack of towels
and you are who you always were, but I know what to say,
I am five years younger, two breakups erased, the timeline bendy
these Uni songs, first job songs: ‘Blank Space’, ‘Style’, ‘22’,
in stereo, my inside and outside finally synced. I wish you could see.
Elizabeth Gibson, based in Manchester, has received a New North Poets Prize from the Poetry School and a DYCP grant from Arts Council England, and has been published in Atrium, Butcher’s Dog, Confingo, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Lighthouse, Magma, The North, Popshot, Queerlings, Spelt, Strix, and Under the Radar. https://elizabeth–
Butch elegy
(a duplex, after Jericho Brown)
The shelves in the back corridor have collapsed,
spill rawl plugs and nails across the floor.
Her rawl plugs and nails, untouched since she died,
stashed on black ash shelves from B&Q.
Those thirty year-old shelves from B&Q,
the first piece of furniture that she bought,
her first-bought furniture to hold all she owned –
tools, DVDs, game cartridges: all the long-lost formats.
Dusty tools, DVDs, games: all those obsolete formats
I never use, but couldn’t bear to bin, piled here.
Ten years never used. Time to bin what I piled here,
break up crumbling ply shelves, take them to the tip –
I crumble, break down. Take me to the tip.
The shelves in my back corridor have collapsed.
Edinburgh-based Jay Whittaker has published two poetry collections with Cinnamon Press, Sweet Anaesthetist (2020) and her Saltire Award winning debut Wristwatch (2017). Publications include Poetry Review, The London Magazine, The Scotsman, Ink Sweat & Tears, Butcher’s Dog, The Rialto, The North, Fourteen Poems and the Bloodaxe anthology Staying Human. https://jaywhittaker.
If he asked about the grave
his mother wouldn’t look up.
He’d tell her about the fresh flowers, I’d no idea
he’d say
so unexpected.
I guess
she’d reply
what with the way he never did fit in anywhere
really, those bullying kids, then the drinking
and fighting. I only heard
he collapsed…
and he’d have to steady himself at the thought
of everything he didn’t know
and everything he did.