Ruby Lawrence: Two Poems

Human is earth talking over itself

Be a fox cub. Chew

the strap. Push past zips, run riot,

cherried, and star-like.

Look into riverwater, bring your damp

shadow: face it. Shriek! Be the cracked

chord, the dropping throat. Be voices

hooked on treetops. Saliva on a mushroom.

Underwater woodlice, moon-walking.

Be tender to even the chemical parts

of yourself, touched as they are by iron,

by sunshine. Inhale sorrow, composted

with apricots. Blame less the apples, falling early.

Extend your legs into terraces of mulch.

Curl your wrists like a rot wizard.

Skip gravel. Be the hoof, treading loins

of grass

beside yawning mudflats.

Be teeth, licking themselves so excellently

with air, be air, be all the air

in the world, gilded and resting.

Be a dislocated tree, a fractured

sapling. Be coiled.

Say fuck off. Say

come in.

Speak silence, until the caverns

of your mouth grow blue with darkness

and there are only catfish.

Be stonepiece and peach, leeches

and greenblood, galactical wastage, eph-

emeral slime, be quiet and needled.

Need me.

Be silk oat sage fire cresting salmon ghost

memory poured

into small cuts in the leaf litter.

Place soiled paws

upon the outside of my tent,

and bounce.

/

Gourock Pool

I returned to taste the salt of my favourite pool then walked the nearby streets, perusing flats beyond my means. The pool water sits in a box by the sea, both plucked by the same hand of wind. Post-swim the water lives in my towel, snug under a specially shaved armpit. A mortgage calculator informs me that I can’t afford an attic flat in Gourock. An attic flat with windows each end, refracting the light not once, but twice.

£12,800 deposit

His voice was very quiet, a crackled whisper from behind me. Good god! I cried. You look so human for an abstraction. He nodded dolefully, and we wended our way along the promenade. Jellies shone at the edge of the water and the ferry sent us crumbling waves. He recoiled. He tried to talk, I think, but unless it’s mortgage repayment projections in relation to deposit, no sound comes out. Further down the coastline lay a secluded spot, tall grasses and boulders forming hidden pockets of clammy space, encrusted with limpets. I took his hand and led him down cold. Under his clothes he was lithe and hairless. My fingers entered his mouth every time a 5.6% or £910 per month began to form. I left him dabbling his feet in the Firth of Clyde.

/

Note:

The poem Human is earth talking over itself was written in honour of Sharpham Estate (Devon, England).

Ruby Lawrence is a writer/artist based originally from North Yorkshire, currently based in Cornwall. Her poetry has been published by Pilot Press, Gutter, PERVERSE, Rabbit, Magma, Discount Guillotine, and many others. In 2014 she earned an MLitt in Creative Writing from The University of Glasgow, and also holds an MA in Contemporary Lit, Culture and Theory from King's College London.