Poetry

Gangsta boat and the blood sword in my stomach

I dream in bunny rabbit girls clad in bunny rabbit curls. Soft. Down, a sculpted

  thigh,

back of the thigh,

swelling coat hanger loaded with the dress oh, yes, that’s a rare thing

ripped-out like whisky in the bathroom after the after party

                on the deck

                                where the sun meets the

lip of a no, not sky, sea.

Greatest, big-nothing tranquil that we ever did saw,

why it’s a trade here

– name me another and i'll pay you in

spices,

from the box in my cupboard (it’s multi-coloured).

Spring thing built for tumbling not ibuprofen packet,

or my mother, but the plastic, down the stairwell

I washed it in the bath, the spring thing. Along with the fishing set.

Magnetised those eyes to the innocent rod which now swift faucet-drifts

choke-hold for: vain-tinged iris

Mirror nemesis dopamine temptress

translucent as the coy carp’s gleam

It’s dirty in the night time

In 20 years my senior, and yours in fact

when the shuttle, half the speed of

light, has reached all seven of those,

c i r c l i n g  p l a n e t s   n o t   u n l i k e   o u r o w n

except low musky amber skies hang the sixth

and the faint trail of lilac streams that seventh ocean midriff

We will see how:

Opposable thumbs / Mudanjiang’s dairy farm / The RDS 220 hydrogen / Burj Kahlifa /

  Nesquik corporation / every oil spilled blackened feather / and the final cull of the Amazon’s

  palmed tree

( c u t  i t s  l i f e l i n e  w i t h  t h e w h i m  o f  g y p s y  t e l l e r )

– were all such dirty work.

But not in that form of sly

which leans into

s / u / l / t / r / y

but the kind of pitiful

brown eyes of the dairy cow

rules the roost in planet two

and “us” all in cages

U V A  f o r  s u n,  a n d  a  p a c k e t  o f  p o w d e r  b r e a d

Evie Wilson