Natalie Crick

DOCTORS AND NURSES 

Lee’s Sister is upstairs 
Septembering in the back bedroom where
Lee sometimes eats old bread. 

After long days of waiting, 
Lee moves like an infection up
stairs that smell of cigarette smoke.

Sister’s shadow is a boy 
of five in the right light. 
Lee lights her smile with a tickle,

breaks the pill onto the spoon’s curve and 
tells his patient to suck on it. 
She coos. This is what doves do,
excited through open lips. 

Lee tends to Sister’s most-hurts, examines 
the cut on her toe and kisses it. 
Allows her to undress to rub salve into her cattle state. 

Sombre Doctor Lee, grave in gloves, 
checks her pulse:

Miss, there’s something you should know.

THE MEATMAN 

The meat man asks him to name the red things

rump steak, sirloin joint, whole fillet, beef shin, lean mince 

The meat man talks. Lee begins to think not in meat, 
but in the brown paper and dirty magazines 
the meat man wraps them in. Lee realises, for the first time, 
that his fingers are filled with blood. 
The forks of sheep marrow in his hands 
are small and fine, as though for Lee’s dolls. 

raspberry jam, menstrual blood, flesh suppers, poppy-heads, fox face, a Robin’s breast 

The meat man tells Lee that lions 
do not eat their kill immediately 
but lick the red from the meat 
until it is nearly white. Sometimes 
lions kill for fun. This is called Henhouse Syndrome. 

Lee traces the contours of the meat, uses the cleaver and knife.

Natalie Crick (Newcastle) has poems published or forthcoming in Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Moth, Banshee, Agenda, New Welsh Review and elsewhere. She is studying for an MPhil in Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Natalie’s poetry has been commended in various competitions, including The Hippocrates Open Awards for Poetry and Medicine 2019 and The Verve Poetry Festival Competition 2020. She was awarded second prize in The Newcastle Poetry Competition 2020.