what have i read today, i hear you ask? well, i read a few poems on the poetry foundation website, but my favourite was ‘Janet Waking’ by John Crow Ransom, which is here. it’s not very long, and starts off seeming fairly idyllic, or overly simple, and the rhyme scheme and form kind of help this. then it becomes kind of heartbreaking. anyway this isn’t great literary analysis, but i like how it develops, and i like how the rhyme works with the whole poem.

i am taking part, obviously. i have pledged to read at least one poem that i have never read before every day for 100 days. and i’m going to try to write at least one poem a week but we’ll see how that goes.

today was the first day! i have read many new poems by george herbert today. here is a picture of my book:

i was going to post a photo of me with said book, but i look disgusting. so maybe tomorrow. anyway, i need to finish an essay, so back to it, but i will be trying to document this better from tomorrow.

butter fingers

You stitched a butterfly across my back.
Lopsided, it blinked in the light as I tugged down
my vest to cover the slip of a gap between it

and my slippy black skirt. You felt the wings
with your thumb, smoothed the threads, said
that I was asymmetric and in the mirror I look

like a different person. I wore bright blue
to distract from my jaw, jutted it at you anyway
and you spent an hour uncurling antennae

below my shoulder blades, sewed lines of jet
across the small of my back. You only pricked the needle
into me when I moved suddenly or you felt

I wasn’t paying enough attention. You made a bird
with your hands then helped me backcomb even
the smallest tufts of hair, and though small clumps

ended up on our fingers, baby feathers,
you didn’t laugh or ask if I’d done this before.
I once said I’d rather be your friend

than nothing at all, but I lied. You’d said
that big hair suited me, but the butterfly winked
at the guys we saw later, said “I know, I know”.

You got my coat. I felt the tip of a needle
in my shoe each time I stepped. Or was it a stone?
I wouldn’t let you walk me home.

POSTCARDS

usually it takes the whole family
ten minutes to work out
what three sentences mean.

letters just clog up the bin
always typed, always trying to seem
straightforward. the pictures

cause jealousy, sometimes, or admiration;
sometimes the recipient, one imagines
must just laugh at the cheap glossed image

of a bar decorated with the parts of an elk,
of a bus terminal stretching out like it’s always
sunday after the last journey had gone.
You wonder what they do if they don’t laugh.

In Aldgate we talked about the Romans
and you showed me fake coins you’d bought,
had passed off as real to kids at school

and they’d then punched you in the face.
You had a walkman in your bag held together
by silver tape, and we sat on the side of a building

with pockmarked cheeks, pinboards instead
of windows. You had a tape you’d copied from cds
and radio, you pressed the skip button four times until

The Lambeth Walk played, crackled, and you stretched
out but didn’t stand up. I tried to work up the courage
to ask you what this was, but you were going to do history

and you listened to nothing made later than 1959.
Aldgate was the most easterly gate in the wall round
the city of London, but all the times we met there

you just told me about the pump, the dead and the water
full of them. Chaucer lived in Aldgate, your parents
made you pay rent, and you helped me paint a map

on my wall, then taught me all about the music hall
and Noel Coward. I’d studied nothing but the wars
in history, but let you talk, and for your birthday

I gave you old money, lead you from Aldgate
to where the old world used to hide, stood by
while you taped up your headphones and played,
loud and tinny, the swells of one more song.

I see you on the wrong side of 5am
dropping broken crockery in the dustbin
with a dent in it at the front of your driveway.

Your coat could be a dressing gown.
I try to sleep through the birds and have to hide
my head under the pillow because it’s so light.

I’m not sure what your name is, but I don’t know
if you’ve woken up early when I see you
or if you’re still awake, if you have sat in your kitchen

watching others drop things, or accidentally
smashed them when trying to cook, clean,
tidy, and before you know it you’ve cracked

the skin on your foot and it’s hard but it’s bleeding
and you’ve peeled your feet bare of their socks
and slipped into slippers, softly, padded out

with the broken mug, and you are listening, you lost
track of the time but can tell that it’s early
because it’s starting to look light and you can hear

the sounds of things drawing in first breaths.

FIRE

Candles were covering the floor when I got back
like a cloth that you’d forgotten to pick up – some of them
were face down in their own ashes and oil,
some still pointed at the ceiling. None of them were lit,
I realise that you’re not that stupid. I packed them into a box.
The floor still smells like church did in December.

TOO STUPID FOR DERRIDA

I tried everything to understand.
Apparently you joked around a lot,
which is good to know. I watched you on youtube

and was bemused because you prefaced an interview
answer by drawing attention
to how artificial interviews are, like the translations

that scrolled underneath you. Normal conversations
can’t be subtitled. I decided to buy a t-shirt
with your face on it, to show other people that I

am the kind of girl who reads Derrida but can still joke
about it, then I thought better of it but saved the link
for later. I decided to write my own jokes

based on what I understand about you, which isn’t much.
The jokes were largely just GOD, GO DECONSTRUCT YOUR FACE
OR SOMETHING. I wish I was better at this.

HIGHGATE

you are always unhappy in highgate.
i visited you at home once and was surprised
that you left the windows open all night

so the curtains flapped in the cold
and also that there were so many cuttings on your wall
about the highgate vampire. you said your uncle

spent the night in the cemetery and saw ghosts,
didn’t laugh when i said he must have been high,
didn’t smile when i said that i always dreamed of bells

and voices even when i spent the odd night outside
of the crypt. you said there’s nothing funny
about highgate cemetery, but when we went through it

karl marx looked so solemn that i had to cover my face
to keep from laughing. you walked me down highgate hill
and when i kicked at the slush you said we don’t get enough

snow in london. i said that the sky was pale enough
for more, and held on to you to keep from falling over.

SWEARING ON THE HORNS

I knew a boy who said he was so cockney
that he was born in the churchyard
as the bells rang, and he was brought up

to pray every sunday, to comb his hair when wet;
to live under the bells. I came from further north
and I swore on the horns, everyone in Highgate

tried to catch newcomers out and I was in.
I knew the oath was no oath but permission;
we signed our names to prove that we could eat

brown bread or white bread, kiss whomever we wanted
as long as they wanted to, and to swear that we
would be kind. I swore that I wouldn’t lay a hand

on anyone. I knew a boy who stumbled when swearing
but he could rhyme like he’d got a mnemonic system
instead of a vocabulary, and I tried to teach him how to swear

on the horns one lazy afternoon, we settled into a rhythm;
you must not drink small beer while you can get strong,
except you like the small the best… he laughed and said

fuck, fuck, isn’t that swearing enough for you?
I shrugged and leant on my elbows, paused to hear the clocks
chime five, and I said you must not kiss the maid

while you can kiss the mistress, except
you like the maid the best. He politely finished
my drink and asked well what’s the difference then?