Telephone Piece
電話 ピース
(after Music of the Mind, Tate Modern)

Hello it’s Yoko
Yoko desu
 
Hello it’s Yoko
Yoko desu
 
Hello it’s Yoko
Yoko desu

Purchase an old-fashioned telephone
Place your tongue in a number hole
Taste the dust

Or if you like
Buy a doll’s house phone
From Fisher-Price

Write down the number of an ex-lover:
0191 526 7766
Say it aloud in a sing-song voice

He may have been from the nineties
He may have lived in Hetton-le-Hole
He may have been a prick

Eat the paper on which it’s written

Find a copy of The Yellow Pages

·       Look up the name of a plumber
(he may be called Lorrie Wilson)
·       Throw it into a neighbour’s garden
·       Photograph what happens next

Or put it on your bedside table
Like a Bible

And when your mobile rings
Answer in another language

Moshi moshi
Alex desu
 
もしもし
Alex desu
 
Moshi moshi
アレックス です

Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana’s debut collection was Sing me down from the dark (Salt Publishing, 2022). Her second collection, Skinship is forthcoming with Salt Publishing in September 2026.

This poem originally appeared in The Pomegranate London.

Playing Sim City in Sheffield

Building, building, building,
on the tumbleweed East End
flattened by the 80s into
grey warehouses and emptiness.

My gleaming graphical residencies
for all the children who move away,
for Somalis and Yeminis
and everyone jammed into small rooms.

Here are virtually new roads, greenery,
imaginary new industries
on top of old steel works;
once again cars nose-to-tail parked
and the pixel-pubs heaving on
happening streets.

But SimCity mass transit always fails,
programmed by Americans;
the sim population revolts
demands low taxes,
the buses stay chaotic and competing.

And here comes Godzilla
brexiting through fragile modernity,
tail smashing the plastic promises.

Ruth Aylett teaches and researches robotics in Edinburgh and has been known to read poems with a robot. Her pamphlets Pretty in Pink (4Word) and Queen of Infinite Space (Maytree) were published in 2021. For more see ruthaylett.org

Note: Playing Sim City in Sheffield was published in High Windows, March of last year.

A Theatre Director Speaks

They can imagine a forest,
we don’t need this minimalist tree,
we’ll represent a place to live without walls, without foundations or a hearth.
A canvas sheet flapping in the wind counts as home;
a person only needs to pretend a shelter.

What can be removed while making a play?
what is left of a person on stage?
The road, the sunset backcloth,
we don’t need the window, or a roof to be out of the rain.

Remove the family,
the actor doesn’t need a cast, they have a slew of children.
Pick them off as the budget doesn’t match
their decadence, represent them with just one actor, one
with nowhere to sit, they must be waited for without showing up,
ditch their knotted emblematic handkerchief,
the audience knows this man has no state, their
steady hundred-mile gait means the audience get this is
a refugee without supporting cast,
on an empty stage, a stadium holding pen.

Here comes a doctor with a hat and a bag, deny him entry,
the sick can cure themselves, a fluttering red crescent
stands in for disease, clear the stage, we don’t need medicines.

Two blindfolded actors with flags may signify a war;
no cannonades, have them exit to piano diminuendo

to allow a pause, within which
the audience are too affected to speak.

Brian Comber has had four volumes of poetry published, Preparing a Child for the Physical World with Cerasus and Panopticon, A Caparisoned Elephant and This World a Hunting is with Black Pear Press. The Fishmongers of Jerez is next.