Today’s choice
Previous poems
Play, for National Poetry Day: Gayathiri Kamalakanthan, Paul Stephenson, Jem Henderson
Gayathiri Kamalakanthan is a Tamil poet and producer.Their play Period Parrrty will open at Soho Theatre later this year. Their debut novel-in-verse, Bad Queer, is forthcoming with Faber. gayathiri.co.uk, @unembarrassable.
Two-man Play
How two men can become
four men can become
eight men
How two men can be
interchangeable replaceable
stand in for each other
How two men can
be a camera
be a choreography
How two men can command
the attention of two hundred
men watching
How two men can tell a story
can be the story
can have it all stored inside
How two men can grace you
for one night only
how they are only tonight
Paul Stephenson’s debut collection Hard Drive was published by Carcanet in 2023. It was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award and the Polari Book Prize. He has three pamphlets including Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017).
Note: Written after the staging of Edouard Louis’ ‘The End of Eddy’ in Granada
girls’ play
how come grown ups don’t get to play dress up? i don’t remember the last time i got to wear a princess
dress.
// in their canonical texts of game studies, both Hi-zinga and Cai-wa relegate dress-up
dismissively to the sphere of girls’ play.
i put on a dress. i feel like a fraud – except now i’m pregnant. now i’m playing at being a lady & i’m good
at it.
// play (verb): engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical
purpose. “the children were playing by a pool”.
maternity leave & i’m watching all my favourite cartoons while the baby in my belly presses into my
pelvis. the sky is full of hot air & the rain is staying away & the kids play in the sprinklers & school is
back in session & the temperature is rising. it’s two days past my due date & i wanna fill up the birth pool
with ice & rubber duckies, wallow
// the most common playground-related cause of childhood A&E visits is falling from the
equipment to the ground. children fall because they slip, lose their grip
or because they’re children playing on monkey bars, swings, slides, merry-go-rounds & see-saws.
i’m slipping, falling – losing myself in the overdue heatwave no water death death death anxiety space
where everything feels like labour or like braxton hicks or like the end of now & the beginning of
something too holy.
that virgin whore thing has it all wrong. the most divine & feminine i’ll ever feel is nine months pregnant
being fucked by a man who whispers his devout little prayers to god.
// rough-and-tumble play is when children do things like climb over each other, wrestle, roll
around & even pretend to fight.
i’m not fighting with the medical staff, not insisting on my pronouns. is there anything more woman than
being a mother? i’m here playing dress up, not trying to be me.
there’s blood on the pad, blood on her glove.stretch and sweep – a sacrament. she touched my baby’s
head. they’re coming any day now.
Jem Henderson is a genderqueer poet from Leeds. an othered mother and their collaborative project Genderfux came out in 2022 and Motherflux, its sequel in 2024. A collection with Chris Cambell, small plates, is out now.
This work was previously published in Motherflux, Nine Pens Press, 2024.
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