Tessa B Berring

Tessa Berring's pamphlet 'Cut Glass and No Flowers' was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2017.

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'Suck'

said the purple concrete

which is not true

The concrete was silent,

the concrete was grey

the concrete was not covered

in little gap-tooth violets

(who said it was, eh?)

There was no fresh breeze

there was something wet on my lap

(It was a Tuesday)

Things got ripped

My hat was blue corduroy

There was an apple core

and a colourless shoe

washed up at the shoreline

*

I feel as if I am praying (again)

Yesterday someone said

'don't be so damn solemn!'

'Dear God!', they said,

'it's all a show, remember'

There was an office chair

- an orange one

some jolly music on the radio

There could have been flowers

(foxgloves?)

There were pale blue cotton buds

stains on a surface

outdoor cows

who knew nothing at all.

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Film

I've forgotten the whole story

about the hair that the man

could not locate

on his tongue

How I could not bear to watch

his parted lips

his searching finger and thumb

How the camera lens

stayed glued

around his mouth

for more than four minutes

and not to the figure

of the woman on the ground

with the dropped margarine

in the brown-yellow light

Nobody saw her get up

and walk away

Did anyone see her get up

and walk away?

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