POETRY

Examples of published work.

SELFISH POEM

Short-listed in Fiction Factory Poetry Competition 2024
https://fiction-factory.biz/winning-poetry-competition/

somewhere / a bomb explodes / leaving / my coffee undisturbed / leaving ruins / and here / a family collapses / leaving me / sat / fat / studying its etymology / meaning / a group of people / under / the same roof / leaving me stupid / unravelling / my unrelation / my border / my brain / making boundaries / out / of surface / of surface level space / here / a bomb explodes / leaving me / with search results / war turns into repetitions / I absorb / “conflict” / like I care / like if etymology / of family / was as narrow / as blood / as removed as latin / which taught

a family can be connected through a school of thought

meaning / any believer / in humanity / should not be reading / etymology / the truth / is suffering / within / the body

THE GLOOM

First published by The Vanity Papers (March 2024)

https://www.thevanitypapers.com/magazine

The earth was without form, and void

– GENESIS 1:2

Before the shape of consonants, did we exist?

God had no breath to sweep up this, this language forged

Of deep water, bulging cloud– I sounded nothing

But an idiot sprawling out, in black ink I rolled around

Until I saw you under my puddle– under air

Am I ever alive when you’re not there?

Can I ever go back to a screaming thing

My dear

I want to be moving so fast that my atoms go

Straight in yours, loving you with the force

Of all chaos: of our gloom. In all this darkness

Where were you?

A lockless black hole, screaming too?

Material nothings cloaked in tulle

My love

The earth had no form while I loved you.

The gloom, the gloom, she’s in my room.

Plucking out ribs to spell your name, and

When it’s done, it won’t be the same.

Before we were, we didn’t exist–

Before I’m born, I’m missing this.

WAITING

First Published by Frosted Fire (May 2024)

https://wildfire-words.com/alice-brooker/

ūht-cearu, noun (OO’HT-CHEH-ah-ruh): care early in the morning

It started with a dream,

you had worked late last night and I couldn’t trust Selene, so
stared at her from the window, and knew
she was loving him as all in love women do.

I flew from the top of the landing, landing
softly on our worn carpet. From the hook

I took

fairy lights, your bobble hat, fresh-flasked mint tea and sprang
off with the cat. For a while, our only sound was paw-prints,
heel and toe, two one-track souls as two tracks in the snow.

We hung lights on what sat skewered by the road, and waited,
waited, to bring you back home.

The cat cuddled your bobble hat and fresh mint tea went cold.
We waited, waited, to bring you back home.

The cat cuddled your bobble hat and I dread your body cold.
I waited, waited, to bring you back home.

We buried you with a bobble hat, I want my body cold.
I waited, waited, I am waiting to get old.

The tea is still unopened, the lights are bright and bold.
I waited
but waiting

is just the nothing left to hold.

BRONTË FALLS

First Published by OPC2023A (Black Eyes Publishing UK & Gloucestershire Poetry Society, December 2023)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1913195279?psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE ref_=chk_typ_imgToDp

What a woman claims is sacred / especially when its coldness turns the hand to red / as though water was glass or some metaphorical mirror / each moss is damp and dangerous / I feel my feet curl around the threads of slime and cling / with a small and sturdy triumph / they adorn this braver, climber self with a mothering shade and drape me inside a green, unkissable hue / filth is damp and fresh and covering my limbs until / I am that old idol / Artemis / with no way out at current / the water tickles me the way time does when it counts itself–

everything I ever truly loved let me love it first.