white washed red door home
shady holiday bungalow
Imperial bar O’Neill’s
frames central widening
square from where
chip shop arcade
fish shop restaurant
share walls and fall into
shore shadow at evening
wind moistened salt cuts breath
recognition comforts eyes ears skin
scaled trawlers tarred vessels
with outboard motors pier
to the west it cackles
crustacean pop rock laced
every flushing tide rush
draining brown weed
green slime lubricate
easy summer basks
all colours blue and white
surface sparkle high dive
to opaque bisque below
hardier winter annual
of local resistance
tenacious toe crotch shoulder
gulls watch
jigsawed together
river ocean wave
sea pierced through with craving
He said it left a fluidness
a saltiness
in me
Pangs
milky faced kid by the newsagents
cola bottles and gummy bears
bus driver’s pay and view
a fixed stutter
in spasms
Our hero takes a dive
there’s nothing natural about this lack of drowning
a blue flower in full detail
floats recessive
frayed by its texture at the edge of reason
his terse words grip
a character in disarray
tabloid radio heightens
each red letter day
converges dot into film
wave into synthetic
hazy gender wrappings
Our hero says ‘matey’
sweats manliness and false touch
rises above the crowd
lusting
after negatives
body porridge
breeds orange in the dead sea
hot milk in a flask
grulk
Glassworld
just you and i
drawing orange
engrossed in your self contained colour
she is not herself right now
microwaves buzz
the air is conditioned
and fanned to the limits
how can i know you?
it is yesterday, and silver icicles shear
gold bars textured for effect
against all absorbing dullness
papier mached
here i see you clearly, twice
streaked with time
your tiny spotlight lolls in shadowland
at your feet, asleep
defying gravity
and sucking in the light
lacking lustre
used and abused
for ten, or fifty years
it is later than the last time i looked
it is later than the last time i looked
it is later than the last time i looked
capitulation in bskyb and black box reality
opacity with the capacity for a lifetimes viewing
at a fraction of its true cost
a wilderness of carefully exposed construction
religious in its reality
it had happened
i had written
you were drawn with intent
how rigid is the night
Dee McMahon is currently working on a collection of poems and prose that will investigate the use of space in the north Liverpool Docks. She is completing an MA in Writing Studies at Edge Hill College of Higher Education, in Ormskirk.
Page 451
