So on Wednesday some folks from creative writing put together a poetry/prose night upstairs in the Meadow Bar. The guys did awesome, particularly Natalia, Struan and Niki, who were all doing a public reading for the first time (whoo!). The crowd was lapping that shit up. Honorable mention for Aiko's mad performance skills. I opened with some old poems and a couple of new(ish) ones, one of which is here.
Mutant
Taking my arm in the simmering buzz
of the crowd, through the diabolo-spinners
and gyring, half-naked drummers,
she led me under canopies
and curtains that climbed into sundown,
staining the air red and purple, stirred
with the neon bar-lights that awoke hot-
humming, weaving charms in the eyes.
Her mid-Atlantic accent melded
with the calls of rucking bodies,
reflecting soundwaves from London
students and New York sightseers;
she tripped among puddles
and the bedlam of dancers, her skin
highlit and spinning away
from my melding mid-British accent.
Once the band sent the crowd re-singing
the setlist through the streets I found her
hands, found her pallor under the moonlight –
her tawny eyes, cold silver, her Indias of spice –
and exchanged nights, eye-freckled and glowing
in the shifting light of a new year,
til our voices reflected in each other’s ears
and she might have been my twin.
Thanks for reading,
Dave.
