AV Bridgwood

bridesmaid

two buns weeping cardamom into cardboard. we’re wrapped
in your worst towels. i love how your hair dries, clumping

like flung earth, then splitting into static. so this is how you live here,
naked in a pine box, watching the sails. fjord is a whatever-word

a place you take sandwiches. you turn the sandglass,
throw water on the hot stones, sidle off the pier’s end

like you’re crossing a road. what do i know, i am the visitor.
i come bearing supermarket tulips. the fiancé makes me spin

fables of your adolescence, leave my shoes at the door.
the fjord is still pretty wild to me, pooled like desire

in its V of mountains, its rocks sinewed like clenched hands.

AV Bridgwood is a writer from Manchester. They are a former Foyle Young Poet and recent graduate of UEA’s MA Poetry. AV was commended in the National Poetry Competition 2023. Their work has been published by The Poetry Society, Lighthouse, and Ink Sweat & Tears.

AV wrote the following about ‘Bridesmaid’:

As a queer person who grew up before gay marriage was legalised in the UK, I always experience a residual discomfort at weddings, a feeling of being distanced or other. I think when you feel like you’re outside a situation looking in, that’s often a good place from which to write a poem. I wanted to capture that sense of being a visitor in a disorienting landscape, but also the role that friendship and connection to nature can play in grounding us through that disorientation.