The Underlook E-Book

Helen Seymour

• Herausgeber: The Poetry Business
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 40

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

The Underlook balances precariously between the real and the surreal. Informed by experiences of physical disability, surgery, and medical trauma, this collection articulates a life lived under the bed, at the bottom of a well, in the glances exchanged between doctors. The poems revel in the uncanny and in the power of ignored or repressed spaces, summoning us under to 'listen … crouch down … press [a] hand against the white gloss shuddering'.

Leseprobe

The Underlook

Published 2022 by The Poetry Business

Campo House,

54 Campo Lane,

Sheffield S1 2EG

www.poetrybusiness.co.uk

Copyright © Helen Seymour 2022

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

ISBN 978-1-914914-00-3

eBook ISBN 978-1-914914-01-0

All rights reserved.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Designed & typeset by The Poetry Business.

Printed by Imprint Digital.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Smith|Doorstop is a member of Inpress

www.inpressbooks.co.uk.

Distributed by IPS UK, 1 Deltic Avenue,

Rooksley, Milton Keynes MK13 8LD.

The Poetry Business gratefully acknowledges the support of Arts Council England.

Although the body was that of a dog, Possum’s head was made of wax and shaped like a human’s, and I could not have wished for a more convincing likeness.

– Matthew Holness, Possum

Contents

Child Development Centre 1996

Crack

Beep

Heaving

Psychic

[Rearranging the Words of] Case Dismissed in Slaying of Deformed Baby

Spinal Fusion

You’re Just So Funny I Can’t Stop Laughing

The Wasp in Room Ten

24 Hours in A&E

My Time in the Hospital

Subject: P.E., Form III, 2000

Falling

Fire Escape

You’re Looking Well

*

Where is Hugo?

Missing

Back to the Scene

Say They’d Taken It Seriously

The Vicar Said I Need To Stop Searching For Hugo

Chase the Forest

Fever Dream

*

Subject: English, Form II, 1999 (Exercise Book)

Adolescence

Parallel Universe

Silver Shell Girl

[Rearranging the Words of] Parents Complain that Disabled TV Presenter is ‘Scaring Children’

Mortuary

After One Session of Therapy

School Photographer

Witness Protection

Patient Care Documentation 2010

Postman Pat on Oxycontin

[Rearranging the Words of] The Ethicist’s Response to ‘Is it Okay to Dump Him Because of His Medical Condition?’

Lighter Fluid

Well This Is Awkward

What I Actually Want To Do

Child Development Centre 1996

Helen is starting to break her falls by putting out her arms. She’s had three episodes in which she has cried because of her hands; she says that they don’t hurt but is obviously uncomfortable. Helen is very shy in the clinic, and I hear very little speech. I understand that the content of her speech is normal but strangers have some difficulty understanding her.

Crack

She got drenched in blue staccato

at four in the morning.

Bit on the mouthpiece and sucked,

chucked up beige in the back of the sick bus,

ambulance yellow and green paramedics –

it’s all nausea to me.

Surgery was white dust and blood,

she was all they talked about over taps and the nail brush:

a girl had tried to plaster cast her heart

and by the looks of what they pulled out

it only half-worked.

‘She’ll be disappointed’

one of them said.

Six hours later her bed was empty.

She was found wandering round the fracture clinic,

falling in love with broken people.

Pumped up with morphine, back into bed,

by nightfall they found her

making chains with her intestines.

The sheets were blood and brown and black,

the moon was a cut

and her stitches were embedded, deep.

Next to each other by the sinks again,

turned the tap down to make sure he was heard:

‘Told you she’d be gutted.’

The other one laughed and had to wash his hands,

this time, because of the spit.

Beep

The anaesthetist I’ve been dating is really starting

to annoy me, not once has he told me that I’ve still

got some of the general anaesthetic left in me

and it’s very rare but it can stay in you for this long,

but as a special treat tonight, he’ll take me

to the hospital, beep us into an empty room,

I’ll lie down and he’ll put suction cups

over each part of my face and drain it from me,

it will be black and thick, he’ll pour

it into a see-through plastic bag, clip the top

and put it in the medical waste bin, clean my face

with a cold wet wipe, and tell me, soon, I’ll be awake.

Heaving

Every time I see you, I vomit,

and you see it, the beige-but-not-

boring gloop of tea and saliva and

yeast and satsuma. You never

mention it, not anymore, you just

look away while I take the kitchen

roll and wipes I carry around with me

and do my best to clean it up, clean

it off me. Try and save the train

ticket I bought just to see you.

We carry on walking, whether

it be over a bridge in London