A poem called
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Susannah DICKEY
message withdrawn
Susannah DICKEY
Susannah DICKEY
There were buildings in the fog. They drifted in and out of
clarity like a tune from the past like a newly shorn old memory. They had
columns the clouds were cumulonimbus. I once wrote a song to help remember the
types of clouds / it was the same tune I used for all my songs / I can’t
remember it now. Why are you telling me this the bird I keep at the corner of
my mouth asks me and I have no answer. The bird moderates my actions but I do
not resent it. You know I have a proclivity for sentimentalism I say to the
bird I know that’s why you arbitrate so harshly. The bird breaks me into
terracotta strips / it chews on my tongue like it’s a Gaviscon. (The bird is
small the bird is black the bird is not a small blackbird.) The bird tells me
that all my memories are false memories that they are unreliable that columns
have not been fashionable for years. I say the clouds looked like the hands of
people struggling like a plastic sack full of meristems. The bird says this is
a funeral have some respect and so I have some respect but not too much respect
the bird says. I used to cry on top of someone but it might have been an
affectation. (The sky is the colour scheme of a cous cous salad.) You’re just
learning this now the bird says. It eats the sourdough hor d’oeuvres when it
decides I’ve had enough. I barely know the man in the coffin / he had a name
like the first flower to come back to Hiroshima. Now you’re getting it. At
night I pull the erroneous hairs from my body and I lay them like cirrus
feathers. I will consume the bird. It will in turn consume me.
Susannah DICKEY is studying for an MA in Creative and Life
Writing at Goldsmiths. Her poetry has appeared in Ambit, The White Review,
Poetry Ireland Review, and hotdog. Her first pamphlet I had some very slight
concerns was published in 2017 (Lifeboat Poetry Pamphlet #3).