LEOTARD
I am a small parcel a small peach in a brown paper bag
a tightly cornered hot-crossed bun I tremble in a tin
I love Victorian buildings I fall asleep in a red Renault Cleo
am so kind am so tired go for the bread at Christmas
and wait by the indicator chasing drops in the windows
making the crumb moist I stick the whitest part up my nose
the body of Christ in bits when I get there I don’t want to
paint tears point toes or plié in the mirror but I stage myself in fourth
these days I will point my toes in the shower or walking
or when he pins my legs in the air there something in me straightens
though never total he kisses my calves and I gesture fondness
for the tautness of shoes the pink leather like a skinned pig
without the requirement for dye they’ll call my name but I am pain
fully shy I can’t go I don’t go up to collect the award
Chloe Elliott is a poet and writer based in the North. She is a winner of the 2022 New Poets Prize as well as the 2020 Creative Future Writers’ Award. Her writing features in Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, bath magg, Bedtime Stories for the End of the World, and Ink Sweat & Tears, amongst others. She is interested in mixedness, scrap ecology, and the tactile world.
IS&T internships run for 4 months each consecutively, and in order to go some way towards redressing the balance in publishing, will for the foreseeable future come from the Black, Asian, Latinx and other ethnic minority communities; we will almost certainly expand our searches to include other disadvantaged groups as our programme develops. More details are below.
Details on how to submit to Chloe can be found here.