Chrysalis
Our job is to watch them. We are deliberately bland.
Our training gives us tolerance and the slow smile of compassion.
Off-site we practise the techniques: a hand on the shoulder,
a verbal deflection, some small banter about lives
we have created for ourselves out of fantasies
that we know to be theirs.
They are grey and still in the jackets we provide.
They think our jackets become them, consider
the tightening laces as evidence of future beauty.
Colour obsesses them. We dare not plant flowers
outside the windows, only geometrics in khaki
decorate their rooms. A rainbow is a disaster.
We feed them with restraint and patience, watching
their small mouths open and close.
It could not be said that we love them
although every one of our actions
mimics that strange attachment.
We know how to quieten their needs.
Our strategies fool their escape.
They think contentment while under the jackets
their bodies rebel, weave fantastic parachutes
packed against the cords
concoct terrible reds and blues and yellows.
Here we must always keep the windows closed.
- Andrea Porter & Heather Taylor
- Caleb Klaces & Joe Dunthorne
- Claire Crowther & Chris McCabe
- David Hart & David Hawkins
- David Tait & Kay Syrad
- Fergus Allen & Stephanie Bolster
- Geoff Sawers & Peter Blegvad
- Helen Mort & Charles Johnson
- Jared Stanley & Siddhartha Bose*
- Jennifer Wainwright & Loveday Why
- Kirsty Logan & George Ttoouli
- Luke Kennard & Richard Price
- Milorad Krystanovich & Suzanne Batty
- Nicky Arscott & A F Harrold
- Rebecca Farmer & Jane Griffiths
- Sarah Hymas & Jo Brandon
- Simon Smith & Ryan Murphy
- Tess Biddington & Adam Burbage
- Tim Atkins & Jeremy Over*
- Tom Chivers & Emily Berry
- Zoƫ Brigley & Meredith Andrea




