Sunshine E-Book

Melissa Lee-Houghton

• Herausgeber: Penned in the Margins
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 89

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Sunshine is the new collection from Next Generation Poet Melissa Lee-Houghton. A writer of startling confession, her poems inhabit the lonely hotel rooms, psych wards and deserted lanes of austerity Britain. Sunshine; combines acute social observation with a dark, surreal humour born of first-hand experience. Abuse, addiction and mental health are all subject to Lee-Houghton's poetic eye. But these are also poems of extravagance, hope and desire, that stake new ground for the Romantic lyric in an age of social media and internet porn. In this new book of poems, Melissa Lee-Houghton shines a light on human ecstasy and sadness with blinding precision.

Leseprobe

SUNSHINE

Melissa Lee-Houghton was announced as a Next Generation Poet in 2014. Her first and second collections are published by Penned in the Margins. Beautiful Girls was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her poem ‘i am very precious’ was shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. She has received a Northern Writers’ Award for her fiction. She lives in Blackburn, Lancashire.

PRAISEFORMELISSALEE-HOUGHTON

‘Melissa Lee-Houghton is a bold, observant and daringly honest poet who intuitively knows what she is doing, even when she ventures into the scariest places.’

Poetry Book Society

‘These unflinching poems feel as if they wrote themselves and have the compelling quality of a great novel. At times the language becomes rhapsodic, though there is always a lyrical grace and adroitness, and an intense but careful control.’

Pascale Petit

‘Melissa Lee-Houghton holds a mirror to our mouths and teaches us how to breathe so that it hurts like hell.‘

Abegail Morley

ALSOBYMELISSALEE-HOUGHTON

Beautiful Girls (Penned in the Margins, 2013)

A Body Made of You (Penned in the Margins, 2011)

PUBLISHEDBYPENNEDINTHEMARGINS

Toynbee Studios, 28 Commercial Street, London E1 6AB

www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk

All rights reserved

© Melissa Lee-Houghton

The right of Melissa Lee-Houghton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Penned in the Margins.

First published 2016

ePub ISBN

978-1-908058-59-3

Print ISBN

978-1-908058-38-6

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

CONTENTS

And All The Things That We Do I Could Face Today

Videos

Z

You Can Watch Me Undress

The Price You See Reflects the Poor Quality of the Item and Your Lack of Desire for It

Loneliness

Letter to Dr. Ali Concerning Our Suicide Pact

Letter to Dr. Moosa Regarding My Inconstant Heart

Hangings

Mouth

i am very precious

Woodlea

Cobra

Sunshine

My Girl

Blue Prelude

A Good Home

Love-Smitten Heart

Wishlist

Beautiful Bodies

Last Trip

Hella

Elm Street

Samson Beach

Mad Girl in Love

He Cried Out To the God of Austerities Who Said On the Seventh Day You Shall Tax, Pillage and Burn

Hope

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Melissa gratefully acknowledges the support of the Royal Literary Fund and the JB Priestley Award. She thanks the British Council for enabling her to visit India. The poems ‘And All the Things That We Do I Could Face Today’, ‘Loneliness’ and ‘Last Trip’ were recorded for The Poetry Archive. ‘You Can Watch Me Undress’ was first published in the anthology Glitter is a Gender (Contraband Books, 2014). ‘Z’, ‘Beautiful Bodies’ and ‘Mad Girl in Love’ were first published in The Rialto. ‘Hangings’ was first published in Proletarian Poetry. ‘i am very precious’ was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem; it was first published in Prac Crit and subsequently in the anthology Best British Poetry 2015 (Salt Publishing, 2015). ‘The Price You See Reflects The Poor Quality Of The Item And Your Lack Of Desire For It’ was published in Granta. ‘He Cried Out To the God of Austerities Who Said On the Seventh Day You Shall Tax, Pillage and Burn’ was published in The Morning Star.

With thanks to Tom Chivers, whose continual support has enabled these books to reach an audience. Thanks also to Steven Houghton, for keeping me alive.

NOTES

‘And All the Things That We Do I Could Face Today’ is a lyric from ‘If Only It Were True’ by The Walkmen. The line ‘the caves of your sex’ in the poem ‘i am very precious’ is taken from ‘By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept’ by Elizabeth Smart.

‘I thought I should never speak again but now I know there is something blacker than desire.’

Sarah Kane, 4.48 PSYCHOSIS

~

‘who shall I tell my sorrow

my horror greener than ice?’

Marina Tsvetaeva, ‘THEPOEMOFTHEEND’

~

‘Burn, suffering!’

Mikhail Bulgakov, THEMASTERANDMARGARITA

Sunshine

And All the Things That We Do I Could Face Today

If Disney made porn they would pay us well for our trouble.

We share baths together because we get bored and it’s cold and

we used to talk but now I just pull sad faces and you sympathise.

I was thinking about abstract things, like what distance means to lovers;

physical distance, emotional distance and the distance

between us in the bath in our heads. I looked into your eyes,

your perfect, blue-jay Hollywood eyes, and how starved they sank

and I massaged your soft cock in my right hand; your eyes rolled

in ecstasy and I let my thumb rub the soft part and you melted

into the lukewarm water like butter on a hot knife. Your come

oozed out slowly and sweetly and I licked it off my hand as you

groaned. Immediately, a dozen bluebirds flew in and tidied your hair,

a gentle and spritely music soothed your brow and blew

all around us, and all I wanted was forgiveness.

And the come in my mouth tasted strong and hormonal and strange;

and you settled back into the bath with your flushed skin and your

cock bobbing and your come floating in globules

on the surface of the soapy water. You said you needed to get clean

and drank your advocaat. I said Rob’s getting me some MDMA

for my Christmas present. You said what you gonna do, sit in and get high;

I said no, we’re gonna walk around all night drinking beer

and talking. I’m thirty-two years old, I’m thinking,

and I need to come, and I need to sort my life out, my head out,

my heart dilated to an apple, the core waiting to be pierced

by some dumb Cupid, pinning me to the one trajectory.

You said I’d better rinse the bath down, and watched me clean

my pussy, and dry my body, and grow cold and silent again.

I love you baby. I love all of you and I will never love myself.

This book is gonna be a killer. It’s gonna suck me dry,

suck me white, suck my insides out and leave me hollow and high.

Do you even realise how cool the full moon looks

over Pendle Hill and all the rotten towns at midnight, howling

and hollow, and do you remember how good it feels not to touch

on MDMA and have all that hollow love like a mouthful of wasted come.

I’ve never come so close to drowning, my love.

The world seems so hollow from here — I’ve never been less sure,

saturated, lonely or wet, and over and beyond my head.

And what if the moon’s not full? And what if? Where are we going?

And why can’t I come too? You fall asleep nestled under my arm

and I want to pinch you; cruelty being all I’ve got for now.

Is it brave of me to fall from this sad height? Or should I

climb down and lie in this coffin of pain and wait for lights out;

listening to the sound of my own pulse beating against the pillow;

in the same sheets he slept in when he stayed at our house.

I fit inside love like the breath in a flute. I will escape

at the slightest pause or hesitation. You need to clasp me.

You need to tie me down. Please. I want to go nowhere.

Videos

I held hands with you today. I held hands with you

at the doctor’s surgery awaiting the results of my blood test.

I held hands with you during Synecdoche, New York

and fell asleep mid-way through. I asked you how it ended

though I knew. They all died, you said. Everybody did.

I was the wife who didn’t care and her lover.

I was the protagonist and his impending death.

I was the little girl and her green shit.

I was the house on fire.

I was the much-lauded play.

I was the world’s only fat junkie.

I woke when the titles played out and disregarded

all the thoughts that attempted to suck me out of finality.

There’s nothing final when you can play it again;

you watched the same film a year ago and everyone still died,

and I still let go of your hand.

Z

Inside the 6th floor hotel room I am standing in a black puddle,

my bare feet on granite, looking out over Liverpool.

The crevasse between us is not real or habitable. My sex

oversteps the mark, eclipsed by the day-time and night-time glimpses

of my own nude and calculated body in the space-age mirrors,

shiny as wet skin. My pubic hair is trimmed so the definition of my pussy

is kempt and cute, and the thought of a million hands on my breasts

batten me down to the crucifixion of plump and ecstatic,

clean, white pillows.

The first time the phone rang it was midnight

and Melancholy was crying because you boarded the same train.

You kissed her and said you were jealous when she talked to other men.

You begged her to come home to your house that still stank of me.

I’d been suffering the delusion that you were singularly responsible

for the relief of pain in my diamond-encrusted heart

that was manufactured so carelessly

it will never resemble an object that beats.

I placed a pill in my mouth as the line went numb,

then your text came through to discredit her confession.

I’m still rock-hard, I said. The light had long since faded through

ochre and cobalt blue. I was swimming around in my semi-flooded hotel room,

closer to tears than you knew and praying in my sated head stop this.

Sometimes when it hurts you say over the phone,

I’m going for a piss, or you’re doing my head in and

other, less poetic things, and then I put my hand in my knickers

because I’m always wet and although I feel nothing

it comforts me to know a feeling has been felt.

I tell my husband it matters not that we constantly fall out

just that in this way important things are discussed. He laughs.