Upon the release of her debut collection, Division Street Helen Mort treats us to a poem
Illustration: Ian Carrington
Seeing the cart and quartz-white mare
from your window, open to the street,
I want the things that other people don’t:
tortoiseshell glasses someone must have
died in, a boa’s glossy soddenness,
the china mug, cracked with a final argument.
I want to climb inside the knackered stronghold
of a fridge – no longer cool – or lie beside you
on a mattress moulded by another’s bones,
drift down the City road, lay claim
to every disused shop, the winter trees
still reaching out for all the leaves they lost.
Come back: we’ll take the slim, once-wanted moon,
unfashionable blackboard sky. No-one will miss
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