Oneiric,
whaling. Pool
of battery acid
and cellophane, swill
of diet pills. Small capsules,
a mouthful(l). The oesophagus
will survive harpoons, dynamite
even. We are talking formaldehyde
on a country lane. Knocks you right
out the water. And the atlas is a deadly thing,
the sound of it chortling and thumbing its way
into all we cannot hold. And us drooling at the lilac,
colour of waste light; committing joys and their serial
numbers to memory. Which we buy. Which we buy gladly.
Heart the size of a four-seater car. Ardently we eat the abdomen
out the sky humming all the way. I should be grieving the spacing of
my eyelashes and I am acned and hackneyed with a heart like a four-
seater, pickling. Pissing the megawatts away never looked so good as this.
—
‘Ten storey car park hymn’ was published in 2016 in the UEA Undergraduate Creative Writing Anthology, Undertow.