Michelle Penn
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the poet
Michelle Penn’s debut pamphlet, Self-portrait as a diviner, failing, won the Paper Swans Prize in 2018. Her poetry has appeared in Perverse, MIR Online, 192, The Rialto, B O D Y, Poetry Birmingham and other journals. Michelle plans innovative poetry / art / music events in London as part of Corrupted Poetry. She’s also a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen.
the poems
In air
She sees only the flies, flies flitting about the bed in the
operating room, Field Hospital C, Danang, the name
echoing like two bells, chiming then fading to stone,
replaced by a distant beep and the flies, flies and a slurred
recollection of her daughter's voice on the telephone,
something about after, something about Thailand and
the flies, their wings like rotors, a strange sound for flies
but maybe Vietnamese flies move in a different language,
and they’re flying while she lays still, encumbered by
strings or wires, trailing from her nose, her arms,
something beeping, and the flies with their rotor wings,
darting squares in air, landing on the tray where the
scalpels are spread, then taking off again, and why do
they trace hard squares while their wings are rotors and
rotors are round, none of it adds up and maybe she’s also
a fly, somehow snared in wires and strings, a fly tethered
to a bed or maybe the earth while the others beat their
wings, the steady rhythm of rotors but then the flies all
land at once, their feet tickling her face, her hands, no
more rotors, just a soft buzz and a distant beep then she
is lifted, hot air, a deep cool, a cloth brushing away the
flies, flies fluttering silent wings and disappearing into a
clean white wall, then a white bird surfaces, a featherless
bird, whispering, you're in Thailand now, your daughter
is flying over, and her daughter, flying from far away, she
hopes her daughter will wear her feathers.
talking philosophy
we were meant to discuss eternal return
but the fires were blazing again & the riots
& it all felt —
the sunshine a bit too bright & the last time
we said this has to be the last time
we’re all in the same storm but not
in the same boat, not in the same ghost
things have to change, we say
& take to the streets yet again but
I've heard how sometimes
firefighters join the flames, how they
become so entranced, they burn
Hotel October
the woman has become her blue-tint portrait
another autumn in this room
season oblique as the underside of a chin, the hard corner
of a table, October tricky-sweet, like liquorice on the tongue
outside, the gentle mobs dissect her life
ten-second censors, all of them
and yet she longs to believe
in the attraction of thing to thing, life to life, each drenched
in some god’s love
another October in this room, another fall
fall, that Americanism, so blunt, no Latin gymnastics, just fall,
from the Old English for fail, decay
the Old Norse for sin
gravity always feels strongest in fall
an apple tumbles from a branch, the moon plummets
towards Earth, space and time collapse into one another
withering leaves sink in conspiracies, autumn
the moral to summer’s fable, October
asking questions to which she is the ghost
Publishing credits
In air: The Rialto (Issue 94)
talking philosophy: 192 (Issue 2)
Hotel October: The Alchemy Spoon (Issue 1)
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