Cleo Henry
I am sorry to tell you
that in my short life
I have failed to save
two drowning swimmers.
Their shaved chests, their blue caps –
they could almost be twins.
It could almost have been
the same day twice.
I dream that people stop me
in the street, tell me
swimmers often die this way
but that doesn’t explain
why the water teems like that
or why they keep jumping.
The vicar’s wife says
the vicar has to accept tea
however it comes.
God, too. As a shimmering
mist, a wandering heifer.
Or as a man in spandex, butterflying.
Cleo Henry (they/them) is a London based poet with an interest in queerness, archives and the apocalypse. They released their first pamphlet, The Last Lesbian Bar in the Midlands, with Fourteen Poems. They have also been published in Ambit, Selkie and by Banshee Press, Cipher Press, Pilot Press and Broken Sleep Books.
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