John McCullough

the poet

John McCullough lives in Hove on the south coast of England. His first collection, The Frost Fairs, won the Polari First Book Prize in 2012 and was a Book of the Year in The Independent as well as a summer read in The Observer. His latest collection, Reckless Paper Birds, published by Penned in the Margins and shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award 2019, focuses on vulnerability and the human body. It won John the coveted Hawthornden Prize in 2020.

the poems

Queer-Cole

              You tumbled into my palm in a trickle of sterling
             bad coin foul queen though I didn’t notice.

              I pocketed you conveyed you like your Sedan chair
             respectfully slotted you into vending machines that coughed

              you out. You winked at me from a change tray
             and abruptly I spotted everything about you

             was wrong your weight your ill-defined milled edge
             your obverse skewed. Not copper zinc nickel but lead

             sprayed with gold paint. Too shiny. Queer-cole
             they used to say meaning counterfeit or base money

             what ends up improperly beside your person tilting
             the system forcing each wall mutilating the weather.

              Fucking queer a voice in the Watford crowd snarled
             as my lips brushed Ryan’s cheek. There I was my mouth

              mimicking legit my hoodie cap trackies like a man’s
             but on close inspection awry my voice too light

              edges blurred. Flickery. I carry this awareness in my blood
             how simply I’m revealed as undermining the currency

             warping the ceiling. Now coin I keep you squirrelled
              in my wallet’s secret section. You are my talisman

              return me to what I am no pink pound but queer-cole
             rebel head wonky origin dangerous minting.

Stationery

              September is going all out to ease us in.
               The clouded sky is a whiteboard for helpful diagrams,
              the first cool air as welcome as your hand inside my jeans.

              Autumn zips round with its orange highlighter
               and you provide nifty shocks and marshmallows,

                        leaving pornographic Post-its that ask me to rendezvous,

              please, for hot chocolate. I am the type of man
               who likes unnecessary displays of manners,
              who appreciates thank you cards, warning signs,

              a forest of regretful notices for building works.
               I admire rows of ginkgos that lose all their foliage
              in one drop to form a Yellow Brick Road.

              I am a desperate Lion today, stalking Scarecrow.
               I chew biros, glimpse at my watch too often. I was so afraid
              of being late to see you once, I arrived six days early.

              Love is horrific like that. First it’s a rabbit, then a duck,
               then it’s a ravenous, one-eyed sock puppet;
              but the rest is yoghurt adverts. And you fasten my thoughts

              with the most beautiful paperclips, even the filthy ones,
               like the time I saw a grove of ripening chilli plants
              become a rainbow of penis trees. Do you wish to continue,

              says the voice of a self-service checkout. Yes, yes I do.
               Between the shops, the sea snuggles under its blue leaves.
              The clock tower waits patiently for Christmas,

              a familiar figure below waggling his arms
               to lure me over. Succeeding. Your skilful face punches
              a giant hole in the day and I jump through it.

Tender Vessels

              I keep trying to slip away through the crowd
              but history won’t take its mouth off my body.
              What was exacted on someone else’s softness,
              his cuttable flesh, is always about to happen here.
              The vague kinship which exists between tender men
              glowing with thirst starts in awareness of this,

              how we’re unstitched by tongue prints, resurrections.
              Standing in a street party one Pride, I saw a figure
              stomp through, fists raised, and strike three boys.
              They dropped to the ground, clutching their heads.
              I witnessed everything, squeezed a stranger’s shoulder
              then fifteen minutes on, my body was distracted

              utterly by the smell of oranges. The unspeakable
              scrapes a fingernail across my neck, but I can only
              concentrate so long before I wind up decanting
              myself into the nearest fizzing light: Instagram,
              house music. It’s like those inventors who tried to devise
              a spray-on cast for broken bones, created Silly String.

              But there are remedies worse than squirting
              metres of sticky mayhem across a jubilant face,
              outcomes bleaker than attempting despite the scissors
              to inhabit this twenty-first-century skin.
              I live in a dream of plummeting from the earth’s
              tallest building without ever having felt more beautiful

              because I’m not the only one falling. I’m in a crowd,
              a loose democracy of descent, velocity with its hands
              all over our bodies, but not enough to stop us
              gossiping and blowing kisses as we speed
              through the air together, reckless paper birds.
              They will find us with our beaks wide open.

Publishing credits

All poems: Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins)

Shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award 2019

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