Love Poem to Stephen the Phlebotomist
First published by The Young Poets Network in 2021
How bored you are, explaining phenotypes to me.
I stammer about GCSE biology; I have forgotten T cells exist,
I have forgotten clots, platelets, osmotic pressure,
I have forgotten my birthday. You hand me another form;
like mine, your hands are small. I wonder how many times
a day you ask which arm, how many times across your life
you will request a rolled up sleeve. ‘Left,’ I say.
The lilac tourniquet clasps my tattoo and you remove
your gloves to seek a vein. Some days, my skin is suffocating.
Some days, it is remote. But here, the eye of the needle blinking,
you: talking, me: bleeding, I feel something like normalcy.
Because haven’t humans always done this? Opened our veins
to each other, watched faith trickle from the crook
of our elbows, hoping, hoping for better? You say
the way we treat the vulnerable says it all. The vials
are filling with such constancy that for the first time
in my life I love my heart. Stephen, I have never been sanguine.
But for you I split a smile and say ‘My friend Em wants some.
My blood, that is.’ You call her a freak, which is fair.
O Stephen. I have forgotten how to be empty.
I have forgotten how to be scared.
First published by The Young Poets Network in 2021
How bored you are, explaining phenotypes to me.
I stammer about GCSE biology; I have forgotten T cells exist,
I have forgotten clots, platelets, osmotic pressure,
I have forgotten my birthday. You hand me another form;
like mine, your hands are small. I wonder how many times
a day you ask which arm, how many times across your life
you will request a rolled up sleeve. ‘Left,’ I say.
The lilac tourniquet clasps my tattoo and you remove
your gloves to seek a vein. Some days, my skin is suffocating.
Some days, it is remote. But here, the eye of the needle blinking,
you: talking, me: bleeding, I feel something like normalcy.
Because haven’t humans always done this? Opened our veins
to each other, watched faith trickle from the crook
of our elbows, hoping, hoping for better? You say
the way we treat the vulnerable says it all. The vials
are filling with such constancy that for the first time
in my life I love my heart. Stephen, I have never been sanguine.
But for you I split a smile and say ‘My friend Em wants some.
My blood, that is.’ You call her a freak, which is fair.
O Stephen. I have forgotten how to be empty.
I have forgotten how to be scared.
Epithalamion
First published by the epoque press in 2021
We were married in Claire’s Accessories.
Two Best-Friend crown rings, two lattes,
the cashier utterly baffled at being asked to perform the ceremony.
The way you look on King’s Parade –
your Camus curled open, your dyed fringe
glistening, black coat, army boots, an earnest beret…
How can I not feel that twinge
of envy? When you were smaller,
you were a horse girl. Your septum piercing cringes.
But I liked Malory Towers, too. Let me pour
you a midnight feast – scones, jam, cream,
the Spanish hot chocolate you adore.
I see us in pinafores, sitting by the sea.
I see us as we are – spilling ourselves, girlish, girly.
First published by the epoque press in 2021
We were married in Claire’s Accessories.
Two Best-Friend crown rings, two lattes,
the cashier utterly baffled at being asked to perform the ceremony.
The way you look on King’s Parade –
your Camus curled open, your dyed fringe
glistening, black coat, army boots, an earnest beret…
How can I not feel that twinge
of envy? When you were smaller,
you were a horse girl. Your septum piercing cringes.
But I liked Malory Towers, too. Let me pour
you a midnight feast – scones, jam, cream,
the Spanish hot chocolate you adore.
I see us in pinafores, sitting by the sea.
I see us as we are – spilling ourselves, girlish, girly.
Play dead!
First published by The Mays Anthology in 2022
Sometimes I can feel the hot snout
of a gun nosing at my temple.
A dog that needs to go out. A dog that drops
its ball into your lap and asks to play.
Lovers have touched me there.
And doctors, checking for hairline fractures.
No one has found anything.
First published by The Mays Anthology in 2022
Sometimes I can feel the hot snout
of a gun nosing at my temple.
A dog that needs to go out. A dog that drops
its ball into your lap and asks to play.
Lovers have touched me there.
And doctors, checking for hairline fractures.
No one has found anything.
Self-portrait in a compact
First published by & other poems in 2023
I take my vitamins with gin and tonic.
I am in a swanky mid-century hotel.
I have been put up by my editor
because he does not want to put up with me.
There is a chaise longue here.
The bath is marble and has clawed feet.
I can cry as much as I wish
and I always get given clean towels.
The view is passable. New York. Night.
There’s a balcony, I think.
Mainly I sit by the vanity
and pluck my eyebrows and smoke.
They bring me coffee.
They make the bed while I’m still in it.
I have grown used to the hospital corners
but they give me four pillows, not two.
First published by & other poems in 2023
I take my vitamins with gin and tonic.
I am in a swanky mid-century hotel.
I have been put up by my editor
because he does not want to put up with me.
There is a chaise longue here.
The bath is marble and has clawed feet.
I can cry as much as I wish
and I always get given clean towels.
The view is passable. New York. Night.
There’s a balcony, I think.
Mainly I sit by the vanity
and pluck my eyebrows and smoke.
They bring me coffee.
They make the bed while I’m still in it.
I have grown used to the hospital corners
but they give me four pillows, not two.
Woodland For Sale
First published by Tower Poetry in 2020
I would work on a development
of fairy rings; loop after loop
of polka-dot, poodle-skirt
toadstools, rehoming the fairies
falling from heads in exam halls.
I’d reintroduce the wolf
to his old friends
and end the practice of pond dipping
in favour of pond diving.
The lakes I would decorate
with the eerie jewellery of frogspawn
and big breasted lily-pads;
the streams I would fill with miniature
belugas and all the tuna I regret eating.
I would seed a few forget-me-nots
next to a swing, which the centaurs
could look upon, but not sit on,
mourning being born, foreign
under their own firmament.
It would rain beetles, spit spiders,
drizzle deer, which would land, unphased,
antlers raised, spun with bone and grace,
trotting on. I’d have unknowable bird song.
I would plant daisies as deeply as tattoos.
I would make kingfishers less camera shy
and find the water voles and mice and
kiss each of their baby heads, one at a time.
I would sprout rabbits in holes
like spring- pricked bulbs, I would
melt dinosaur toys back
to dinosaur oil, give it proper burials.
I’d toil in my woodland
for hours, hoping that somehow
with love, and grubby thumbs,
I could salt the flowers with bees
and give back all the trees.
First published by Tower Poetry in 2020
I would work on a development
of fairy rings; loop after loop
of polka-dot, poodle-skirt
toadstools, rehoming the fairies
falling from heads in exam halls.
I’d reintroduce the wolf
to his old friends
and end the practice of pond dipping
in favour of pond diving.
The lakes I would decorate
with the eerie jewellery of frogspawn
and big breasted lily-pads;
the streams I would fill with miniature
belugas and all the tuna I regret eating.
I would seed a few forget-me-nots
next to a swing, which the centaurs
could look upon, but not sit on,
mourning being born, foreign
under their own firmament.
It would rain beetles, spit spiders,
drizzle deer, which would land, unphased,
antlers raised, spun with bone and grace,
trotting on. I’d have unknowable bird song.
I would plant daisies as deeply as tattoos.
I would make kingfishers less camera shy
and find the water voles and mice and
kiss each of their baby heads, one at a time.
I would sprout rabbits in holes
like spring- pricked bulbs, I would
melt dinosaur toys back
to dinosaur oil, give it proper burials.
I’d toil in my woodland
for hours, hoping that somehow
with love, and grubby thumbs,
I could salt the flowers with bees
and give back all the trees.
Jesus, making a table
First published in Stephen the Phlebotomist, Nine Pens Press, 2022
Yeshua
Yeshua
Yeshua
through the trees.
Their bare bodies litter your yard, the bark
in reems. You are squaring logs with an adz,
you are sanding. You are thinking of how a stream
makes a ravine. You are sanding. Your father
plastered the walls, built the beams above you,
clapped dusty hands and panelled the sky. The
bowdrill is boring into the soft meat of the cedar,
the sawdust pooling at your feet. What marvellous
feet. Do you remember being a small boy, being dusk-like,
dirty? You would watch the wood become smoother
through hours. You know how to coax something lovely
out of the ringed corpse, the way you tease Olive-Tree
Warblers from men’s necks and watch them line
your inner arms. The flat back of the table is laid out
like a gift. Your fingertips are just as unique
as mine. I could not lift a mallet, but you?
There are no unsteady carpenters. A lifetime
of shouldering dead trees, and you are saying to me
Why did you think that my arms were too weak to hold you?
First published in Stephen the Phlebotomist, Nine Pens Press, 2022
Yeshua
Yeshua
Yeshua
through the trees.
Their bare bodies litter your yard, the bark
in reems. You are squaring logs with an adz,
you are sanding. You are thinking of how a stream
makes a ravine. You are sanding. Your father
plastered the walls, built the beams above you,
clapped dusty hands and panelled the sky. The
bowdrill is boring into the soft meat of the cedar,
the sawdust pooling at your feet. What marvellous
feet. Do you remember being a small boy, being dusk-like,
dirty? You would watch the wood become smoother
through hours. You know how to coax something lovely
out of the ringed corpse, the way you tease Olive-Tree
Warblers from men’s necks and watch them line
your inner arms. The flat back of the table is laid out
like a gift. Your fingertips are just as unique
as mine. I could not lift a mallet, but you?
There are no unsteady carpenters. A lifetime
of shouldering dead trees, and you are saying to me
Why did you think that my arms were too weak to hold you?