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Likestarlings is a place for talking in poems. We pair poets with poets and they write a sequence of six new works by responding in turn to one another. Our palaver blog goes beyond poetry to discuss collaboration in theory and in practice. Please take a look, and feel free to add comments, opinions and suggestions here. Read poems here
 

In The Garden


He begs me to believe him
and my head spills over into roiling memories.

The Orion’s belt of nettle welts on my forearm
that day we picked strawberries, his laugh

at how red they were. Milk boiling over on the stove
in frothy cascades, rusty flakes of foreign lipstick,

the night he came home crying
after hitting a badger on the slip road,

the crush of garlic under the mortar
and its lingering fingersmell,

the bubble of blood to my cheeks after each kiss. In the garden,
his hand is hot in mine while my eyes rake his face,

searching frantically for more of her traces.