Two poems from EX-CETERA, which will be out in the world this time next week! (29/09).
‘Brent Cross Shopping Centre’ and ‘Jump’ relay episodes from very early on in Dolly and Man’s relationship. The good times, the happy days, the innocence. Before it all fell apart.
Pre-order EX-CETERA from Nine Pens now and get a limited edition bookmark with it.
Brent Cross Shopping Centre
On our third date, we went shopping for funeral outfits.
We bought the charcoal pinstripe suit that you’ll wear at yours
with a credit card we’d pilfered from my neighbour’s mail.
You stole the dress that I’ll wear at mine, harried it into a ball
and shoved it up your t-shirt, left the shop pregnant, glowing
with the success of impressing me, of making me happy.
That dress is the most beautiful, perfect possession I own.
Pale pink bodice, the colour of slight embarrassment; sweetheart
neckline to make my post-obit tits look great; intricate black lace
overlay and nipped-in waist; the buzz of our new love ingrained
in the fibres of its floor-length sheer skirts. “Now you’ll be perfect
in life and in death,” you said, your eyes flickering, feral.
Yes, I’d have been anything, whatever
you wanted me to be. Hidden in a suitcase
under my bed to keep it pristine, I sometimes take
the dress out just to look at it, to touch it, to make
sure it still exists. I am so excited to wear it.
That night, I wrote you a note on a Rizla cigarette paper,
my looping handwriting in purple ink, evidence of my essential
tremor betrayed in the curvature of the letters: Os quivering, capital
I lurching, seasick. I tucked it into the pocket of your suit jacket
when you were taking out the bins. Either you’ll be buried
with it, or you’ll find it when I’m dead. I know you
haven’t discovered it yet because, if you had, things would be
so very different and I wouldn’t have to write poems like this.
Jump
I know you remember how my laughter broadcast itself
as we drunkenly cartwheeled down the silent corridor
of another nameless hotel. You remember the sound of
my apple sourz cackle. You remember how my happiness
echoed all along those ugly hallways. You remember that
another guest begged us to please SHUT the FUCK up because
we were rioting, spraying each other with fire extinguishers,
shouting declarations of love to one another, soaked in foam.
You remember telling me to jump down that flight of stairs,
telling me to trust you, that you’d catch me. And I did,
and I did, and you did. You remember that you promised me
you’d make me happy. And you did. You remember that
you promised me you’d never let me go. But you did.
HLR 