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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
 

Part VI: Brighton 1938

(Extracted from the series “The Phoney War”)


1.

She thinks of England
and he is a tiger.  The receiver is hung again

carefully: a small click
that neither can hear.

Her less purposeful clicks resound
down the pavement.

He desires to lick off the lines she has drawn
in black pen
down the backs of her legs.

 

2.
In the telegram office
they know. They know.
Two lipstick smiles: I‘m sorry
but we have no record of that abode.

He remembers her
clicking her purse, head high;
the message gone unsent

and is humbled. She
ponders only on the holy rage
of Man.

There is a child (not his).

 

3.
She says they will come in a blacked-out van
in the night. Which he thinks
is too obvious.

In the mornings she sticks his ridiculous gum
in the ashtray

and brushes her hair
while she mutters

…I told you so much
of myself.