Big Lizard

~ And Other Poems

            Phoebe Stuckes

I wrote a book of poems
that no one read
I bled into a bag and sold it
I’m certain this data will be used
to incriminate me in the future

when we were not speaking
I saw your face in the ether
and it hurt like a frost

I had a dream it was so cold
the sky and the sea were indistinguishable
I lay down in the grey you covered me
methodically with stones
it was loving and strange like a viking burial

outside the window a multi storey
is in the process of burning down
further outside the window is you

O love of my life
O long 21st century
I want to be carried over the river
to be a massive lizard
climbing the shelves in a convenience store

I want to lie down in a scalding bath
but I don’t have a bathtub
I’m exhausted from climbing out of the duck pond
and I don’t want to talk about it

my chest hurts
I want to open the cage
throw out the pigeons
a lot of the time
I’m having the worst day of my life
a customer came in today her shirt said
nothing like the word nothing stretched across her body

I had a therapist who said
I should never follow my heart that it is like
those mythical lights that lead travellers off cliffs
into bogs

I am angry at my life
it refuses to change
before a caterpillar becomes
a butterfly it eats itself
and turns into soup I think that I am
in the soup stage I’m trying
to emerge from the goo but I am
the goo and I cannot see for the goo

you think that’s disgusting
everyone I know loves this soviet film director
He said a woman on her own is something abnormal
I’m glad he’s dead
I don’t care what he did for the sci fi genre

I am angry at this dead guy
and about a thousand other things
perhaps I can sleep it off
or narrow it down

My overwhelming sadness
what did you do today

I only went to your workplace once
but it is recreated flawlessly in my dreams
I sip a rye old fashioned
while you load the glass washer
at the other end of the bar

I want to gather my possessions
into a pile and set them ablaze
paint the ashes on our faces
as we walk into the woods.

when I lie down on your chest
I feel like a lizard on the warmest rock
weighted blanket
I bend towards you
like a houseplant goes towards the light
don’t put down the phone yet
don’t plunge me into the dark

Happy Valentines!
I coughed up blood this morning
it was heavy in the tissue
like an engagement ring

there is so much I wish to know
about the future
and I understand so little
about my body

every day it fails me
in new and interesting ways
the memory of yours against mine
will be with me
my whole life

thinking about this makes me sick
and joyful it blazes red
inside me like paint
on a fur
I love you/I’m sorry/don’t leave

Em said I’m entitled to my emotions
so I take two
I figure when you are offered a plate of biscuits
two is the maximum
you can get away with

today my two feelings
are misery and rage

I am supposed to forget about
all those bad feelings I’ve had
all those bad men
but I never forget anything

I feel like Tammy Wynette
no one understood her either

I sit in the laundrette
and watch the neon birds
bickering in the trees

I listen to dead David Foster Wallace talk
what kind of genius calls themselves
a grammar nazi
who gives a fuck about a semi colon

he was a tennis player too
what a major dork
what a fuckin scholar

all I did at Oxford was write poems
and get into fights
drink too much wine and
fall in love
fall in love
fall in love

Did I learn anything at all?

Today my two emotions
are tiredness and longing

I accidentally washed my bust card

The advice about what to do in the event of my arrest
has covered my clothes like wet cake crumbs

I’ve started dreaming about my deadlines
and you and I in a physical fight
I’m Jacob you’re the Angel
we wrestle all night

in those dreams
my two emotions
are yearning and more yearning
that surging feeling in the chest

when I look at you
a commercial jet takes off in my heart

while foaming the milk for three lattes
I thought to myself anyway the only place
you can truly be free is in your art

the milk swirled like a tulle skirt
on a debutante and I wanted to cry

my mum sent me several pictures
of a barrel jellyfish
a blue star pulsating in its centre
her friend pulling a face next to it
for scale

when she went back to the beach
the tide had taken it away

I wish I was a jellyfish
alone in the dark with my thoughts
and my blue heart aglow

Em finds a leech in her shower
and her bin fills with maggots

from my other time zone
I try to lift the curse
with my prayers
that are not really prayers
just a gathering of flowers
and the internal recitation
of Stevie Nicks lyrics
our lady of visions
watch over us

I get so hungry at work
I imagine smashing
the chocolate Easter bunnies
with my fists
feasting on the pieces

At night I have 2.5 glasses of wine
eat a whole fish with orange peel
and fried garlic
its little bones were like
the plastic part of a label on a coat

I love you more than I have
love you more than I have loved
anyone in this life
and I feel I will love you for always

when I wanted to die
the word affection struck me
as violent and slightly disgusting
like keeping an exotic pet
I don’t know when I changed my mind

your love has worn me smooth
like how my favourite childhood toy
was either a lamb or a bunny rabbit
but unrecognisable either way
in the end

today my two emotions
are fear and nerves
that prickling feeling in the hands and wrists

this long poem keeps coming out in clots
like Carolee Scheenmann’s Interior Scroll
those pictures of her
pulling the paper out of herself

I went with Alex to see it displayed
it was like a narrow accordion
stained with menstrual blood
she also roller-skated naked
down multiple train cars

to me a child of the internet and art school
these performances seemed
fairly mundane but I’m sure
they were pretty shocking at the time

I’m open to almost any career advice
the sum it would take
for me to shut up and go away
is not so large in the scheme of things

but as every shopgirl knows
the rich are notoriously cheap
they want to have their cake
and let me eat it too

their 7 bedroom houses exist
for me to photograph myself
in an £11 dress in their planet size mirrors

I bring their poorly trained dogs to heel
and fondle their lovely skulls
now they whine when I’m gone

I offer very little to the world
writing a poem
is like doing a card trick on yourself
it’s like being your own unreliable psychic

What are you gonna do
cry about it
What are you gonna do
write a novel
What are you gonna do
fly to the American southwest
blow up an oil pipeline

when I finally quit that job
the algorithm begged me to sell my eggs
to a shadowy company
for an undisclosed amount of money
why not
take what I have

I want ten grand in wet cash
for my negatives

What a joke
I have nothing to give
I am the dust bowl
I eat hard work and topsoil

I am a tar pit
I am the dark place you fall into
I am the sky and I can’t stop crying

I want to be lifted up and deposited elsewhere
like a cow swirling in a tornado

I feel a bit short circuit
I feel a bit nobody puts baby in the corner
I feel a bit defunct way of living

When I told Laura I thought I should retrain
as a software developer she said
you would be very bad at it

every single one of my marketable skills
was acquired under great duress
there was rending of garments
gnashing of teeth

now I wear an expensive mouthguard
and expensive special shoes

when I asked my friends online what job
I should do the only answer I got was socialite
and I got it like three or four times

when Barbara Stanwyck was a ziegfeld girl
she said I just wanted to survive and eat
and have a nice coat
she danced from midnight to 7am

later in life she loved Ayn Rand
it all ends in tears
whatever you do

Cat had a dream about us
we lived in a beautiful house with a courtyard

as she tells me this story you stay
by my side but the house with the courtyard
gets further and further away

anyway it is counter-revolutionary
to desire property

anyway the only place you can be truly free
is in your art

all I wanna do is
gunshot gunshot cash register noise
all I wanna do
is have a little fun before I die

this will be my only contribution
let’s get a cocktail
watch the orcas chow down on the yachts
if I could I’d give them all my boats to break

I feel calm when I am with you
and at no other time

my great weight
when did this stop being true?
When did the fear return
not all at once
but slowly and in the dark
like mushrooms

I want to be crushed into the earth
by a rogue boulder
to be swept into the path
of a falling comet

no hard feelings
water under the bridge

my love for you
goes on and on
the lizard
the heat lamp
the jellyfish
my blue heart
a-glowing
it goes on
the ocean
my love for you

a part of me
will live in this poem forever
the rest of me
goes to work
goes home to the empty flat
forgets you have left
and taken all of your shoes
the rest of me says
now I know what the dream
with the stones meant
it says it says

I’m going to write you a poem
called This Poem isn’t About You
it’s About Me

I’m going to write you a poem
called Headaches From Crying
Are The Hangover of Feelings

I’m going to write you a poem
called The Joke

I’m going to write you a poem
called The Joke Was On Me

I’m going to write you a poem
called I’m The Clown Diving Off The Board
– Pause – The Paddling Pool Fills With Blood

I’m going to write you a poem
called You’re The Only One in The Crowd
At The Circus, Folding Your Arms

I’m going to write you a poem
called My Love For You Was A Big White Cliff
and I Nearly Got Wedged Underneath It

I’m going to write you a poem
called Destiny

I’m going to write you a poem
called If This is My Destiny Then Fine

I’m going to write you a poem
called I Will Always Love You (the Dolly Parton Version)

I’m going to write you a poem
called I Will Always Love You (the Whitney Houston Version)

I’m going to write you a poem
called Gently

I’m going to write you a poem
called Letting It Go

I’m going to write you a poem
called Big lizard
and that one will be the last one

Phoebe Stuckes is the author of the novel Dead Animals (Sceptre 2024), the poetry collection Platinum Blonde (Bloodaxe Books 2020), and the pamphlets The One Girl Gremlin (Verve 2021) and Gin & Tonic (Smith|Doorstop Books 2017).