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Poetry / Holly Humphreys

'Roadkill', ‘Ode to Pink'
& 'Nosebleed'

Issue 3. January 15, 2022

ROADKILL

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I tore off pieces of my tongue

                                    to turn into poems

            and watched them wriggling around, their words

congealing                 

                        into fleshy pulp. The birds are converging

on the roof across from my

window. It won’t always

be this clean.

 

 

 

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ODE TO PINK

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As a child it was righteous to hate pink,

and nothing gone was noticed for long.

 

Now more woman than child, a shade called marsh-

mallow wombs itself around me, and I don’t believe in

God, but you have to be accountable to something.

 

My bedroom was the first place that loved me.

 

To the walls, then. To the wind that oozed

through the baseboard cracks so loud

I had to sing to calm it down.

 

Tonight, under the static eyes

of a bear slept to sickness, I think

of everything lost. Right down

to the hairs.

 

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NOSEBLEED

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I wanted to die in the arms of something worse than me

                                                And you couldn’t even give me that. Your voice

A Rorschach,

                        Blood spatter dripping down the telephone

Wire and

We all know how this one goes.                                 Hymn or haemorrhage,

These habits   

                                    Die bloody.

Come, light, and make language

                                                          From our hands.                        Give in

To the body, your voice                                  receding;          there is still time

 

To confess our wounds.

 

 

 

 

 

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Holly Humphreys is an Essex-based poet and has recently completed her MA in Creative Writing at the University of Lincoln. She is a Poetry Editor for The Lincoln Review and her work is previously published in Abridged.

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