About Text Size: larger | normal | smaller
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
 

You must be mistaken…


… that room was no hotel. I do not smoke.
          You rewrote everything.

Only the roaches were real; gritstone
          spines we lost ourselves in
hunting the last of the wallabies
          through a mist
                     towel damp.

This may come as some surprise but
          I am bound by more than Bostik:
no unfinished Scharnhorst.

          Figure me a U-boat
skulking sea lochs
          or a mummer (the quack,
parka full of vials).

          That summer
you coughed until your larynx
           shrank;
I studied gunships in the bay
           on news reports
that came around again.

           I have dusted down the room
for prints, found none:
           what does this say of us?

           It must be Wednesday.
           Leave a note.
           Don’t feed the cat.