XVI

Palatability for the Corpse in My Poetry

I swear limerence is my default setting. I want. I want. I want. I want. Always to the side. I never know. You know? I hope so. I imagine. You in a crewneck. You rolling the sleeves of your button up. You in blue jeans. Or black jeans. Brushing the hair off my cheek. The colour of your car (I hope you have a car). Our kitchen.

All I write about it ache. Everything is the same. Every page I write is dripping with twenty-three years of lonely blood. I want to write about feathers and grace and kindness but all that comes out is mangled desire. Who comes to poetry for a corpse?

This feels like a distinct lack of gratitude. Criminal obsession with a singular fault. How long have I been lonely for? I swear I never was but in company it spills out of me till I’m alone in my car gaping. Ink dripping down my chin, my tongue. They can all see the Blue. There are gaps under my skin I never found. There is really only one topic I am drawn to write about. Everything else comes out wrong And this comes out ugly.

I have been thinking a lot about palatability. I want to be easy to swallow. Consumed in under a minute, a pleasant addition to your break. Something to read in passing. I don’t know how to make myself easier to digest and this isn’t helping. Somehow I think this is worse.

I need pretty poems, backgrounds and carousels. Hyacinth corners with soft vignette. Four lines of relatable. One of sting. Too many line breaks. I don’t want to overwhelm you. I too have always had a small mouth. Something that touches people in a way they can consent to. I want quiet poems. I don’t want to bleed.

For almost a year now I have been writing one poem. Every piece is the same, same words, same topic same line breaks. I enrolled at uni to be pushed but I can never do what I’m told. I argue with everything, fighting for my shitty angst. All I have is this angst, without it I don’t write, the same six words I have loved since 2016.

God I hope I can write something new. Sweet and light and careful. Most for all digestible.

Dorothea Blythe