Threat E-Book

Julia Webb

• Herausgeber: Nine Arches Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 52

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The poems in Threat, Julia Webb's second collection, train their eagle-eyes on life at the margins, and on family, love, loss, belonging and not belonging. They are not afraid to visit the uncomfortable places where true humanity resides. Threat is an examination of self from multiple perspectives. Its narratives of both past and present tread a fine line between fantasy and reality – these are the lives we have led, the lives we could have led, or the lives we are leading still. Forensically detailed and disturbing, the dark and sometimes brutal undertow of small-town existence seeps to the surface of these unsettling poems.

Leseprobe

THREAT

Threat

Julia Webb

ISBN: 978-1911027621

eISBN: 978-1911027805

Copyright: © Julia Webb, 2019

Cover artwork: © Natty Peterkin

Artist website: https://nattypeterkin.tumblr.com

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Julia Webb has asserted her right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published May 2019 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Nine Arches Press is supported through public funding

by Arts Council England.

Contents

Body of Evidence

Spilling

Dates

what I said was only the tip of the iceberg

Dear Moths

Kettle

She was a biscuit barrel or barrel shaped at least

Good Friday

Fun is particular and unkind

We is in the bank

Weir

Colt

Elegy

In the first hospital

Oh Brother

My grief is not allowed

The language of home hurts my mouth

Girls’ School

Lessons

Bus Station Toilets

Tell Me More Lies About Love

because my home town has a hand between its legs

The Moth

Grammar School Boys

Horses

Gold Rabbit is teaching me how to smoke

Public Bar, Central Hotel

Just

Denial

carport

Sleight of Hand

Consultation

A Hex on Love

Moon Party

Family and Other Distractions

Nothing could be done

Brewing

They told us we were made of Webbs and Humphries

Saturday was crumpet day

The Doll

Saturday afternoons he nods off

Radio Nights

Aggy Scragbag reaches an age

Owlet

Mother as Nuisance Phone Call

She is an unbaked loaf

no sister no

Resurrect

Your mother is landlady of the dead house

Friday Night, King’s Head

Brandon Road

Street

Evidence of Body

you are on fire

Collapsing is a lot like anything else when you think about it

12 Short Essays On Lens Replacement Surgery

Lightening Up

expansion of

body as retreat from the world

It is naked late

Nostalgia

Love Poem to Loneliness

All Shades of Empty

Complicity

All the Women

Notes

Acknowledgements

About the author and this book

Body of Evidence

‘The river coursing through us is dirty and deep.’

– C.D. Wright

spilling

(1)

the body does not consider your feelings

the body demands this and that

demands, commands, demands

(2)

body – unbroken wall of light

body – oh sun and rain – gloriousness of weather on skin

body – blame and guilt in equal measure

the body shrinking into itself in shame

body – solid stuff and liquid

the liquidity of the mind

that bedding down, that settling in

body – entrenched and entombed

body suddenly let go again, floating balloonlike above itself

body – holding it up, holding it off, holding it in

(3)

yes – you are a delicate flower

yes – you are a tree standing solid, pushing your shoulders against the wind

yes – you are drinking the world and everything in it – little sips

yes – tiny things upset the applecart of your mind

yes – pygmy pears and love apples

yes – peeling it off layer by layer

yes – slathering it on, burying something, that need for hide and cover and lost

yes – afraid to be really seen

yes – happiness in there somewhere, peeking out from time to time

yes – wall heart, cloth heart, balloon heart on its piece of string

yes – give it away too easily or don’t give it away at all

yes – boulder where the heart should be

yes body, yes body, yes, yes, yes, body, body, body

yes body and its inconvenient lusts and longings

yes – open legs where the heart should be

deadly nightshade, piss flowers

yes – swamp sex stink of the hothouse, film of damp on the top lip

yes – pebble flowers, cactus spines

yes – the hive of you – your clicks and hums and buzzes

something falling out of you, something running, something flying

yes – the inner frenzy, the calm exterior

yes – you are the whole kingdom of body

Dates

‘you can scratch all over but that won’t stop you itching’

Depeche Mode – ‘Dream On’

(the translator)

Step outside of yourself he said, and I did,

high-stepping from myself like a stripper,

pulling off my skin, trying to ease off my bones,

but the pit of me is wrinkled and dry

as a raisin at the back of the kitchen cupboard.

I drank the wine and sipped glasses of water,

waited inside while he slipped out to smoke,

answered his questions,

even when he forgot to wait for the answers,

smiled until I was a honey smear waiting for ants.

In the brisk cold of the walk home

I shook off the smell of his fags from my coat,

the brush of his beard from my cheeks,

there was a yearning in me it’s true,

but I was waiting for something,

and heart said NO.

(the reviewer)

It didn’t turn me nutsy,

it didn’t soothe the crease or up the happy,

I waited and longed for gentle soft,

nothing was relax

and the energy bullish,

we were halfway up the hill of good

struggling to reach the top,

all over was grey

and the well was dry,

a leafbare forest in February –

nothing to hold or remember,

just another bone-bleached day.

(the old friend)

as if nothing else existed –

at least for a moment

like the dress you coveted for years

that belonged to your sister

but when she finally let you wear it

you bulged in all the wrong places

(the ex)

he had already started talking

and his voice filled the car

like that house you thought you’d miss

but never once went back to

the foreign neighbourhoods of the past

(the city)

I licked the road delicate,

ran my fingers down its heavily trafficked spine,

the city groaned with expectation,

shifted with longing beneath its rivers,

I stroked my fingers over its high rises,

traced its spidery outlines with the hot palms of my hands.

I could feel the aching in its concrete slabs and brick,

feel it arch its back towards the sky.

I was a gap the city longed to fill –

I knew that, and I acquiesced.