But look here, I turned my head
and discovered the Denver Museum
waiting,
nerve, a soft-boned
species hums

He’s a house of cards, a delicately balanced pyramid
held together by hearing aids and dusty bifocals and
wobbling dentures and ageing pacemaker and
shirt with three buttons missing in action and

You became obsessed with nucleated red blood cells when you peeked through an
aperture window at your liquid, viscous nature. You became obsessed with maps

we’re trying to construct a frame for this
‘highly reactive impulsive emotion’
the nurse is looking into it   

Eupatorium maculatum     Acer pseudoplatanus     Quercus robur     About the plant poems: They were sketched from life in a notebook. Later I created riso prints with two or three colours based on the sketches. I tried to make the words as visual as possible so not much description or illustration was needed, but in the case of 'Acer Pseudoplatanus' (sycamore) I added some actual sycamore leaves. 'Quercus robur' was based on a fallen oak I encountered, and 'Eupatorium maculatum' (Joe Pyeweed) felt like a very flamboyant plant. Steph Morris’ poems have been published in his pamphlet Please don’t trample us; we are trying to grow!, in various magazines, in the anthologies Joy//Us – Poems of Queer Joy, Poetry Prescription: Becoming, and several gardens. He translates poetry from German, including Ilse Aichinger’s Squandered Advice and makes visual poetry. He can be found on Instagram @herr_morris70 and on Bluesky @herr-morris.bsky.social and on substack...