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Likestarlings is a place for talking in poems and pictures. We pair poets with poets and photographers with photographers. Each pair produces a sequence of new works responding in turn to one another. Our palaver blog goes beyond poetry and photography to discuss collaboration in theory and in practice in a wide range of places. Please take a look, and feel free to add comments, opinions and suggestions here. Read poems here, look at photographs here.
 

The taste of water chestnuts


To come from neither north nor south.
To hold a strip of paper in your mouth.
To ride the last bus to the depot every night.
To test your signature against the light.
To wear your name sewn in the collar of your coat.
To leave the house, and leave yourself a note.
To look like a newsreader when you grin.
To rent the shoes you’re standing in.
To kick across your footprints in the dirt.
To see the stars as moth holes in the sky’s black shirt.
To cut the crusts before you eat.
To have a voice like February sleet.
To rise each morning from a borrowed bed.
To call the name of someone else instead.
To stir your coffee with a see-through spoon.
To hold your turn, then speak into an empty room.