Extract: Beauty

     ‘… is nothing but the beginning of terror’ – Rilke

When Beauty stumbled down my road, tapped at my door
I saw her from the lounge and hid – her eyes were raw
from smoke, her cheeks like dough from where she’d wept
and worse, I didn’t like the company she kept:
a red-faced drunk who towed a dachshund on a string.
Her mouth was slack. She never said a thing,
just stood and waited, dropped ash in my rose bed,
though as they walked away, she slowly turned her head.
For all she had a face made delicate by rain,
I told myself I’d never think of her again.

Besides, I spent the next year drinking in The Crown.
One Saturday, I rose to leave as they sat down.
She wore a hat. Her eyes were brighter than before,
(although I didn’t doubt that it was her I saw,
the stale light slung across her shoulders like a shawl,
her silhouette drawn sharp against the wall)
and though I grabbed my coat, I stood and stalled.
I knew I had to ask what she was called.
At last she spoke. I felt my hair rise all the same:~
it’s not the face we shrink from but the name.

Extract: Division Street

You brought me here to break it off
one muggy Tuesday. A brewing storm,
the pigeons sleek with rain.
My black umbrella flexed its wings.
Damp-skinned, I made for the crush
of bars, where couples slip white pills
from tongue to tongue, light as drizzle,
your fingers through my hair,
the way you nearly sneaked
a little something in my blood.

At the clinic, they asked if I’d tattoos.
I thought about the parlour
with its jaundiced walls, the knit-knit whine
of needle dotting bone, and, for a moment,
almost wished you’d left your mark;
subtle as the star I cover with t-shirts,
the memory of rain, or your head-down walk
along Division Street, slower each week, pausing
by the pubs, their windows so dim you see
nothing but your own reflection.