Bea Bacon
Look at us going to Argos. Look at us buying a telly.
I can’t believe it. Have you heard of this?
It is like rebirth. It is rebirth. Look at it. Look at us
buying a sofa, a nest for conversation. It will grow crumbs.
Do you know them? Look at every stitch
of the sofa being caressed by our weight, being frayed
by truths we recount to one another that are biblical.
They are written in law. THE LAW THIS WEEK:
we will drink wine most nights.
THE LAW NEXT WEEK:
we will drink vodka because it is the healthier option.
We are being reborn into another logic, another topic.
Look at us teleporting from the sofa and then to the patio,
to the kitchen, to the toilet because we need to go,
to the back of your mind (it is warm here),
back to the patio (did you know about this?) to say,
it’s a lovely night.
Do you get the feeling that the summer nights are scared of us?
I know this to be true. They are scared we will steal
all the time in London. We’re going to spend it wastefully
and make everyone angry. We’re going to frolic
in the Tollington with our mouths open,
talking of now. Have you heard of this?
Have you heard of drinking a warm espresso martini
out of a can and pretending to play pool? It’s ok if you haven’t.
I’m lucky.
Look at you with your big job. Look at me with my lanyard
and my waistcoat. Look at me breaking things.
I broke the hoover. I broke my boyfriend. I broke time
when the large clock in the kitchen stopped working.
It’s always twenty to six somewhere, especially here..famously.
Look at you falling in love. Look at us doing endings and beginnings.
We might be god. Look at the butter in the fridge and the pants
hanging outside like the jewels on the neck of a national treasure.
Look at the mould remover standing at command, and the lump
in the floor, which has brought the greatest excuse to get out of anything—
Sorry, I won’t make it this afternoon, me and the lump in the floor are having a day in!
Look at my hangover on my head like a fedora,
and the smart meter that took three months to install,
which we have now unplugged to charge our cordless hoover,
which I broke. Look at you box-stepping. You’re literally box-stepping
at Green Park station. Look at me box-stepping at Green Park station,
because you made it look like a horrifying amount of fun. I might ..
write a law about this. Run, go on then, let’s run and let’s say
well done, well done, well done. Finally,
I am feeling a normal amount of happiness for a woman my age.
I sit, picking a nail like a sculptor, and think, have I heard of this?
Everything has gone from teeth-ripped celetope
to glaring steel. I remember every second of it.
I am spending seconds polishing our sentences.
The sky knows we are under it.
Bea Bacon is a poet from Bristol and graduate of NYU’s MFA in Creative Writing Programme. Her work can be found in Propel Magazine, Magma, Knife Room Poetry, The Manchester Review and The Washington Square Review where she also held the position of Books Editor. Most recently, her collection THAT’S NICE, WHO ARE YOU? was longlisted by Broken Sleep Books.
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