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Ache
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About This Book
Scarlett Ward is an incredible young West Midlands poet as comfortable on the page as in performance, with a real ear for language and an imagination to match. Her debut collection, created with help and advice from Liz Berrry and others, doesn't disappoint, as it takes its Insta-concerns (Scarlett has 10k+ followers) of depression, insecurity, mental ill-health and the deep and powerful ache of a love found, and turns them in to quite startling poetry -at times as light as petals, at others as heavy and violent as a hob nail boot. Read, gasp, enjoy.
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Topic
LiteraturaSubtopic
Poesíai. to ache is to heal Purple
We’re going to have to talk about it at some point
aren’t we?
Except I don’t want to.
Can’t we talk instead of dandelion manes;
the way they nose their way through
cracks in the pavement,
only to be scattered in infinite directions
when kicked violently enough,
scorned spores spiraling;
frantic heads of fine-spun lace
dizzying themselves away,
as though away is the only place far enough
from that damned kicking boot.
Can we focus on the flowers
and not think of anything else -
not how I ran home to my mom’s house,
shame dampening the crotch of my underwear,
and not the beads from my snapped bracelet
that I clutched tightly in my fist.
I don’t know much about Catholicism
but for the sake of this poem say I do.
Say I’m the communion bread,
the thinly stretched wafer
molded into nipple-sized circles
that fit easily into the mouth
when placed on the tongue.
Say you place me on your tongue,
don’t wait for me to soften before you chew.
Say I leave you feeling
absolved.
Say you do as you will with my body,
my soft girlish body,
all unrisen dough and uncooked,
as you do with the body of Christ;
pull it apart until it relents in your hands.
Say I am kneaded out by fist
and baked in stone fire,
chewed by your jaws,
torn apart by canine.
Say what you did was holy.
Say what you did was out of love.
Why then have you hidden me in your pocket
where you pray that God will never look?
In which the oyster refuses to open
then after that,
every word required a prising
apart of my reluctant jaw,
a sucking sound of a parting
seal, a pulling separate of
a gummy membrane
fastening, a cracking of
cockle-spine prying open
to get to the
Pearl.
I taste the metal of a blade
slipped in neatly
then twisted, feel
forceful widening of
mandibles.
“I’m doing alright, I promise.”
The clink of a sharp snap,
returning once more
to a tight
clasp.
I ask myself
After he touched you, you wanted to wrap yourself in black
velvet / stand in a room with cardboard boxes glued to the
ceiling to make your senses dead to all but that part. / You
would have collected every stimulated nerve and kept it frozen
in that state, / wouldn’t you?
You would have trained them to dance for you the way they
did then. / You would have needed a louder whistle. / You want
to hold your arm in front of a mirror, / reflect the part of you
he touched, back onto you again. / Isn’t that a kind of
cannibalism? You feel certain that you’re eating yourself. / You
are the only one that brings you sustenance anymore, / cloning
that caress that nourished you/ but the result mutates further
each time. / A river will meander from its course to leave its
favourite rock untouched. You don’t think you could allow
anything else to touch you now. / You swear when the sun sets
over an ocean it sets nowhere else, it’s so focused on pouring
itself into this one for you. / When they ask Where did he hurt
you? You won’t point to your heart, / you’ll point to the spot on
your neck where he ever so gently /
kissed you.
Purple
(Love Notes To My Depression....
Table of contents
- Cover
- About the Author
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- i. to ache is to heal
- ii. to ache is to endure
- iii. to ache is to adore
- iv. to ache is to recover
- Scarlett Introduces...
- Acknowledgements
- About Verve Poetry Press