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.