Poetry

Issue #1

Genuflect

When problems are
                                                                            long-standing and
deep-seated
                                                                        try kneeling. Apply
regularly all over
                                                                            being sure to pick
      the ticks
                                                            from the teeth.


Something
                                                                  in the manner
                    of filleting fish,
                                                            cleaning the bone
        to the very quick.
                                                              My hand


    Take it.
                                                                            To fold to
    a gun-metal lump
                                                            lodged in a pocket,
          slipped away
                                                                            in the lining.

It ain't never Coming Back

Twelve years on and
I’ve turned
unsavoury
and terribly tacky.

Twelve years –
it’s a long time to hang
indifferently
          – so I didn’t:

as before, the same
bad joke shows just
enough of its one
lame leg – just enough
of it to see that there is
fluid on the knee – in mock
solemnity, it raises up
its ugly head, its one
good eye – it’s begging,
begging to be said

like an unsteady tread
we come to know
about solace and how it is
when it goes –
only to evermore
break the ice over
weak tea and slip
through lives
like gears

– and if you could hear me
now – how
I’ve grown –
you feel me though
over every last head
and the bed you surround,
up and down the walls,
the ceiling, sounding
dimensions and drawing
them with my clammy
edges, determinedly
towards
my new nub.

Claire Lockwood, Alumni Poet

Claire Lockwood graduated in English Literature from Sheffield in 2003 and is currently working for a PhD in Cambridge. She has published several poems in Poetry Review.