Lamina and 5 other poems

Dyed plums weep their original purple
into the secret spaces, finite security
is an avalanche-primed winter against the cold.

When did passports become chimneys on fire
sending their smoke signals sky high?

This constellation is a bedside emergency,
a salmonella evacuation of decency.
Stars in the wrong alignment are sickness. 

A starched wing creaks its way through the small hours—
salmon bloody themselves trying to get home.

This river in full spate is not the same river twice 
but hold on to its ways of finding a tunnel
through the gaps in the rockbed. 

We have to make the best of it, the very best.

The wetlands freckle with surface ice
as I slough-off my disguise and sink below
the water. I hope no one recognised
how close I was to crying. The damp
seeps back into my bones, the night
awash with creatures who wake up
when the sun goes down. I creak
into the survival routines I’ve created
to survive this place. Another human
finds a sinkhole near to the edgelands
and I inch a little closer. I listen
for the music of other bodies settling
into the water, try to decypher who is
friend and foe. I will myself to belong.

I am a blade

a frond of kelp drying out
on a rockpool

waiting for the next tide.

And you, with your watering can,
brave barnacles, uneven rocks.

I bring ginnels of seasalt
between bloated pockets.

This is how I love you.

I am slime and gratitude.

This is how I am
some of the time.

Don’t turn away as the sea returns.

I am of an undulated tangle
in a forest of possibility.

It is the nerve of us, the verve of us
standing still, holding hands, keeping
the line of us. The mother of us,
loving of us, genderqueer and diverse of us.
The black of us. The enough of all this—
there are enough of us. The we-have-got-to-
do-something-about-this us. The running
out of time and patience of us. The
reading signs, unpacking lies, following
the science and listening to the others of us.
The creative beating heart of us.
The truth matters, caring matters, having-
too-much-is-wrong—we-need-to-look-out-and-
we-need-to-look-after each other of us.
The re-defining what is a man, what is success of us.
The woman-is-more-than-we-have-begun-
to-dream-of-and we’re-not-going-back of us.
The we-don’t-need-to-be-gendered-
and-neutered of us. The appetite for change
but not just for the sake of it us.
Grief and hope and courage of us.
The let’s put an end to their mischief
for the sake of all of us.

She offers to take my photograph. I say that would be
lovely but I don’t photograph well. She asks me to pick
three qualities I would like to show in myself and
some notes for style/atmosphere. I panic.

I say that sounds great—let’s do it! Somewhere I’ve
gone to hide. I am busy, genuinely busy so I put it
off. I remember her kindness as I rush between 
the deadlines filling my mind. Her suggestion niggles

at the bottom of a gender pit dug long ago. The little girl who 
always felt ugly is annoyed at having to share space again 
with an adult self who is no better at dealing with this
than she. I write a message saying I will talk to a friend

who is good at these things. I tell them about the pit
and the little girl. They say that maybe, then, I want 
to be confident, child-like and beautiful. I do and I don’t. 
That’s not what my poetry is like, is it? They agree. 

The photographer hasn’t replied. This is not her task. 
I decide to write a poem about it. That will surely 
help. I wish I hadn’t given my ex their pro photography 
books back. There would be a perfect example of me

there, surely? An exploration of inner darkness and light by Sally Mann
or photo-therapy with Jo Spence. Beyond Beauty like Irving Penn, 
Faye Godwin’s stark landscapes or the domestic intimacy of Elliott Erwitt. 
My ex, the photographer, never captured

a photograph of me that I liked. That kind of thinking never helps. 
I wish I were wiser and  could make myself vulnerable
enough to be strong like the women I admire. I wish
I were real like the women who have dug themselves out.

I imagine the courage and kindness in all the women
who make me laugh at how ridiculous all this is—
image, objectification, vanity. I want to be beautiful, sadly,
this is true. But not in a way that looks like I tried to be. 

I consider cancelling the whole thing. Now I’m against
the wall. I know there are hints already there but 
fear wells up inside me: memories of my mother trying to make
me smile or pose for sexy leg photo competitions for Page 3. 

I wish I were reserved, cool, aloof and had style. Like someone else?
Or that I really looked like people imagine I’d be when they read 
my poems. I wish I were made of words. And I lived
deep in a forest like a recluse and no one knew what

I looked like. I wish I were a punk who didn’t give a fuck. 
I think of myself back in Northern cities and how fragile
I’ve become. I try to imagine the singer in my old band:
how fearless and strong and urban. I think of my Nan

beautiful in her old age because she was kind and it showed
in every line of her face. I imagine this photographer trying
to make sense of all this terror and confusion. I imagine her saying
breathe—this is art, this is process: it’ll be fine. 

after Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson

Sometimes you can hide in plain sight—
refuse to go to church—to convert, refuse
to conform to the current orthodoxies—
maybe you don’t want to—wear a gender
like it is a definition—not fit into a listable
category. As he—like a politician, is being
—one with the common man—like someone selling
snake-oil. She is putting on innocence—or
the mad woman in the attic—he claims
kinship—with strangers—whilst he lays down
his railroad tracks across stolen lands— 
she is—giving—permission to a woman
—she loves—to be—oneself
whilst wearing innocence as a door.