Four Poems by Michael Pollentine

 

Cancer Sticks

 

The sun dims my eyes

Youthful on the felled log

Next to you

Staring into a tangle

Of loose leaves, brambles

Sky is blue

And time is irrelevant

You shuffle tobacco

Into a crinkled Rizla

Not as expertly

As I would be able

In twenty years’ time

When you’d

Already be gone

 

 

Obscura

 

An image

Burnt

Upside down

On a window

Through a

Window.

A seagull

Head

Pointed

Fierce

Even washed

In dim grey

The vivid

Trace

Of orange

Remains

 

 

Container

 

I

(Sometimes)

Wonder

About the child

We couldn’t

Create

The room

We couldn’t

Decorate

The body

We couldn’t

Shape

That I touch

As we cwtch

In quiet light

And cars drift by

The window

 

Why

 

Liquid

Casts

A flopping fish

Dirty

On

Cold slab

Concrete

That Soothes

The turbulent

Form

Air sucks

Sick straight

Laced

Tumbling

Broken

Muttering

Half-grasped

Half-gasped

Spinning

Why?

Michael Pollentine’s main influences (after Iggy Pop lyrics) are David Lynch, Roald Dahl and exploitation movies. He lives in South Wales with his wife Rose and their hamster Betsy.

His poetry features in Outcast Press magazine (Vol. 9 – where it also won Best Poem), Bristol Noir, Terror House Magazine, The Beatnik Cowboy, Roi Fainéant Press, Bear Creek Gazette, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Spillwords, Medusa’s Kitchen, and Literary Yard. He also has poetry forthcoming in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Bristol Noir, The Gorko Gazette (September, and their Big Foot Special Issue), Black Scat Review, and Alien Buddha Press Zine (and their Best of 2022 Anthology and The Alien Buddha's Microdoses Anthology). He is from Newport, South Wales, United Kingdom.

Check out his Linktree @michaelpollentine | Linktree