George Neame
Two Poems
Liquorice Nighttime
Marmalade lamplight at the
windowpane, tubs of chinese takeaway
ageing on the coffee table
where cars still set their headlights.
In this latitude and on this carpet
we lose sight of the little victories
won in an afternoon spin cycle
or fitness classes in the kitchen
and instead we regret the things
we push onto each other’s lips;
time, night, rice, liquor.
The New Normal
*
the scent of warm rainwater
was enough to remind us that
a previous existence once spiralled
behind our curtains, and because the
streetlight still needs re-bulbing we know
that it somehow still survives like that hour
we lost somewhere close to a midnight
at the receding end of March but we never
really lost because we used our own fingers
when we collectively wound it out of existence
*
and while we waited and wondered how
an hour, a month, a springtime could be
handled and tangible and ticking in our hands
but also empty as the husk of a chestnut
we became a rally of repelling magnets
and evaded each other on pavements
the way black peppercorns evade soapy fingers
*
in warm water. now our doubts spread quicker
than bacteria and now fear cultivates fear the way a
rotting pink lady in our fruit bowl hastens
the decay of its intimate co-conspirators—
suspicions ricocheted off satellites,
misinformation in internet cables—
and now idleness is a virtue not a sin,
*
and now we answer the world’s first call
to inaction, because when we are reborn
we will say that we would have wound
an hour out of every day if we knew we
would inhale one more time
*
the second-hand smoke of a beer garden
and the scent of warm rainwater
peppering ash trays and rinsing the foam
from the urn of a pint glass.
—Submitted on 06/20/2020
George Neame‘s poems have appeared in Acumen, Antiphon, The Moth, and Ink, Sweat & Tears. Having lived in Tennessee, Dublin and Yorkshire, he now lives in London.
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