Waiting for the thing to lift
It’s like the weird pink in a painting of Nordic dusk,
which to anyone would look like daylight
but because of you I know it is the night.
There is so much stillness in something held down
in an image, the weight of distress is not always clear.
Like the presence of disorder, how do we determine
how far things are from their regular arrangement?
A door, a bed, a smile, a door, a bed, a wrought-iron glare.
I know something is disconnected,
but where to begin with the context?
And it can’t really be that it’s us,
because this is a weight which straddles us both,
though the connection of two places by a bridge relies
solely on the bridge,
and what is the bridge in this instance
but a thing we are holding up at opposite ends?
I leave you to sleep and I go for a walk,
I’m willing the world to be quiet for you
but no one seems to have realised what is going on,
so I just walk and hold the rhythm of my steps, hoping
what goes down must come up,
what goes down must come up,
what goes down must come up.
Effigies
Your verses are effigies of me,
each thought pushed firm and smoothly in
throughout
and keen as plunged pins,
not one unintended for the core.
Raw, immaculate and unforgiving,
each strikes a real bit of me,
and not only the heart,
but places more surprisingly tender
and immediate.
Gut riven,
knees, ankles,
hands tingling to cramp,
tongue ribboned,
snapped clavicle, driven through clean,
popped rib, rib, rib, rib,
to the intimate tune
of my blissful punctured heart.
And it is in this way that I feel,
lurching to life in your acute images,
for I have not done enough raw living myself,
for the pain more intense in its stainlessness,
more holy for its solemnity,
and which spears me all the same.
Yes, I am ready soft stuffing for your pins.
Lizzy Turner is a poet attempting to relocate from London to Bristol with the Cockney poet she fell in love with. She spends most of the day standing at an espresso machine, and she co-edits the Lunar Poetry Podcast. Lizzy recently launched new poetry podcast a poem a week, as a companion to Lunar Poetry Podcasts. Twitter @Silent_Tongue and @apoemaweek
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