Thursday 3 June 2010

Two Poems - Anna Kirk

Crafting Hour

Crafting hour begins at two thirty.
Tooth hurty, dentistry without drills
But scissors and jokes instead.
We cut and stick our chattering teeth,
Pasting a collage of the past few weeks,
Arranging, overlapping, and gumming up with glue.
I lost the snipped out smile,
Then found it stuck to the sole of my foot.
I like the oddness of your socks, she said.

You should see socks like jazz:
Play your own tune, at counterpoint to others
Who are drying theirs on the rack.
Riff, jam, make dramatic discord
In a cacophonous key, profanities in F major –
Ten in a sock and the little one’s stubbed.
Shooting pains and blasphemies
Strike after that urge to kick the stone
Toe-curled contours of nun’s big feet.

Cut and stick. Cut and stick, hop and skip
To the chant of Nun’s Big Feet.

If I make a habit of it
Then the smile I snipped out,
Causing mild toothache,
Will always stick to soles.


For Leonhart

I made a smudged interpretation of a fuchsia,
Muddied onto the page in Ireland,
Where dogs are named for the wrong star,
Orion.

I find my way by fuchsia-bush Satnav,
The crushed petals plotting a map;
Second stigma from Tufnell Park
And straight on till Hampstead.
The map is now well-trodden,
Releasing rotting perfumes
Just as Ronald releases nausea when
The flowers are beneath his foot.

Phew, she said whilst drowning,
No longer playing the heroine
Of an exhausting gothic melodrama.
She had peaked, but now prefers
To float as a mannequinned martyr.
She chassées into futile cha chas
Down the sewaged moat,
Making her red gown wilt.

Wash, dry, rustle taffeta,
And silk shot bright with scarlet,
Vining, veining, blotting blood
That scabs with fine flesh tissues.
Expose those billowing bloomers,
A shade darker than the tutu,
And dangle tiny ballet slippers,
Quiver, caught in gentle gusts.

Grown beneath my smudged interpretation
Is the greatest compliment I ever had;
A copy of my flower, stuck with
Sellotape.
--
Bio: Anna Kirk is in her final year at UCL, studying English. She has been published in a New Writing North publication called Monkey Business, on The Literateur, an online literary magazine, and has read at various London pubs and basement open mic nights. She find that red wine, fairy lights and bunting all help in creating a poetic atmosphere. Cardigans, Keats and the perfect mug all make her smile.

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