Sarah Crewe
17 (from sea witch)
angel voice recognition
she hears you discard
the word plaintive as both
apposite &clichéd
neon yellow barrel
beacon autumn like nightfall
brings its own impending
sense of loss light/flicker
shade rotates to become day
she wants to build a bonfire
a pyre from the place
in which you are shooting
stars imitate the violence
sea birds tease out signs of land
pan to the turquoise
&the barrel is back
fallen (ann fowler’s 1968)
it’s what happens when you choose the wrong frock
zip pinch skin past 9pm curfew threat
girls like you end up in ann fowler’s suture
streams through a white protestant landscape
orange/blue orange/blue blue/black black&blue
women beaten black&blue apple cart hijack
route volkswagen highway boys park up fingerpoint
yer ma’s in ann fowler’s yr sister runs away
from a king billy hallway your daughter makes poems
out of china street/plate shards forum conversations
stacked shapes like santa got stuck in the chimney&
left them soot whiskey catholic guilt apparitions
abandoned to north end presbyterian
nostalgia lodge photography kicks&thrills
clara
cleavage as class division
you write in the language of nuptials
marx/heart rhyme/rhythm ripped
stripped of soundbite speak of bands
bonds binding
{this word is charged}
you write in the language of sisterhood
adhesive visceral
textual thunderstorm
deep grief slaughter
& blood
& murder
you write in the language of a barrow girl
1915 double d death
destruction apples roll
over continent floors
cup out your dresses and gather
gather the women
gather all hands
for hymn 62
with cords that can-not be bro-o-ken
Copyright Sarah Crewe 2014
Sarah Crewe is from the Port of Liverpool. Her chapbooks
include sea witch (Leafe Press) Signs of the Sistership with
Sophie Mayer (Knives,Forks & Spoons) and flick invicta
(Oystercatcher Press.) Her work has also appeared at Shearsman, Tears In The
Fence, Litter and Litmus magazines. She also co-edited Catechism:
Poems For Pussy Riot and is one third of Stinky Bear Press.
