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Poet and founder of Magdalene college Poetry Society Joe Wright, a second year English B.A student.
Louise
She revved off on her quad to fetch
lavender for the pillow that she crushed
under her ugly black fingernails and kneaded
The baby slept. She was gone
without a word. When I saw her
this morning, she was whitewash on walls
cleaning the shit off with scrunched sun.
Yesterday, I dreamed the Elephant Trees
were her teeth clamped crooked over
the maw of thick morning. The horizon
Killhope Cross
He found me on Killhope Cross, clinging
to the quivering tightrope air
in a heap by my bike and the small stone cross
stuck squat in the verge, like the hook
of a line between the unimaginable
space above, and the docile fells
rolling out below. He pulled up
and as the door opened
I nearly said I loved him. Instead
he gave me water, and a smile.
There was a few minutes of breath-
catching, we were two kites
tied to the same pivot, meeting
between gusts in that strange
hurry of things we knew were yet
to come, the contours
separating gently into valleys, wind
buffeting words along
to one year later. Untied
from each other, we crossed.
He texts me that he drives up there
sometimes. I write
these lines to pull him just a little closer.
has the imperceptible twist of a smile.
Braag – Towards a definition of Braag
More marginal than Faery or Tom Thumb
they’re hardly ghoulish, or spirit,
just canny— rattling the clout and composure
of each unlucky codger who trundles his cart
through the moors at dusk. Sometimes
a bucking horse, sometimes the silhouette
of four bairns stock still under a big
white sheet. They are the collywobbles,
the spine’s prickle and the brain’s bolt.
But they are lonely, being no more
than a sublunar quirk, with no place
in the enlightened world,
in thrall to the lead underbelly of North.
As Braag
At the show weekend, I am the falcon
guzzling curried chips on top of the big tent
snatched from a wobbly-lipped toddler, I am
the last bit of the scrap Suzuki that Les’ monster truck
can’t quite make it over, and the flammable liquid
Les then douses on Sharon and lights
before she runs the hundred metres, causing
the WI to get lippy in the health and safety portacabin.
I’m on Facebook alleging collusion
in the biggest marrow prize, and meanwhile
finding the flaw in the newfangled zonal parking system.
Petrol and horse dung flood God’s good air,
and as things get skanky, I reign everywhere.
