Michael Askew

The Last Time

A kiss to the eyelid, briefly, a password —
the taste of your fingers in my mouth.

Memories of where you put your tongue
in a dream hotel, the rooms all accessed

through chance: tiny doors that close
and open like eyelashes in the rain.

The room where we, like Scrabble players
who’ve forgotten all their letters,

play with gasps and sighs, compete with
cries; the room we litter with expletives.

Solo Woohoo in Pillow Fort

Inside a body inside a
cocoon inside
a room inside an
empty house I spoon
a pillow, pretend it’s
a blouse.
The flesh made foam.
Hollow cavities inside
the bones maintain
our sense of balance in
the world; details
interfere and then collapse.

Michael Askew is a poet and writer based in Gloucestershire in the UK. His poems have appeared in Under the Radar and Cake, and he received an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry in 2021. He also writes about the relationship between poetry and the essay, most recently in a chapter in the Cambridge History of the American Essay, published in 2024.

Michael wrote the following about his poems:

’The Last Time’
For a long time this poem ended with the words ‘all sense and no sense’. That phrase was the key into this particular hotel room, but once I was in, I eventually felt it wasn’t needed anymore.

‘Solo Woohoo in Pillow Fort’
Before The Sims 4 came out, it was rumoured that your Sim would be able to build a pillow fort, climb inside, and subsequently have the option to ‘solo woohoo’. Sadly, this turned out to be a hoax. But the phrase stuck with me for many years, and eventually led to this poem.