JO MORRIS

 

4am

 
The window reflects 
the bed, the book, the door. 
Outside, there’s nothing. 
It’s the hour between 
the end and the beginning. 
In the city square 
the name-scabbed seats are empty. 
Street lights make shadows 
marked with taggers’ leavings. 
Somewhere else, the busker sleeps, 
his cracked guitar case propped against a kitchen chair, 
the instrument untuned, missing a string. 
The rubbish men twitch, dreaming of the heavy swing of the bins. 
You’re asleep, 
the machine breathing in puffs beside you, 
plastic lines crossing your pure profile, your chest, your arms. 
You’re wearing your new pyjamas, cream and pink, 
sanguine against the pallid blanket. 
The rise and fall of the orange line 
belie the effigy-drape of the sheets across your legs. 
Now I wait until daylight, and hope 
I’ll take you home. 
 

Tessellations

 
Music falls from your back pockets. 
A chord trail saltates in your wake. 
 
You are laddered on the garage wall 
but beyond that now. 
 
You see the exponential curve 
and wonder where you put your crampons. 
 
You have the skull red bird and the eternity code. 
You dream of a son called Atticus. 
 
You find the sadness of oranges. 
There are ghosts in your mouth. 
 
You move from minor to major. 
The city puts its arms around your shoulders. 
 
Through her, I see you refracted. 
As the light shifts, you make new patterns. 
 
Your beard might house birds, or keys, or the sun. 
It will meet your father’s in old photographs. 

The Fig

 
All of history comes down to this: 
the soft heft of the sac in my palm 
the knife 
the flesh 
the willing spillage of seed. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jo Morris is an English teacher from Hastings who has taken time out in 2012 to work towards an MA in Creative Writing at the IIML. She has been published in Trout and Cordite.

 

Return to 2012 contents >