Cherry Doyle

I want to move to Twin Peaks

where the air shudders
but the residents love you fiercely, like the sun
won’t rise above the Double R Diner tomorrow.
I am an unresolved plotline of TV static
sizzling through my body like a map.
Corporeal mystery, to be raised in interviews
and theorised about on fan forums. Denied
by my creator, a smirk tickling his lips.
And in the unnavigable forest of my heart,
a slick of burnt oil opens to another world.
People who come here don’t usually leave
this room with the fist-to-face reek of hospital,
these curtains of blood falling, falling. Pouring.
I want someone in a leather jacket to draw me close.
I want a damn fine cup of coffee.
I want a log to tell me everything’s going to be OK.
I want to breathe in torchlight and gunpowder
from the woods at night, the scrape of it in my lungs.
I want the dark, dark – such darkness –
to be a cold, black comfort.

Cherry Doyle's work has appeared in Atrium, Under the Radar, Dust, Ink, Sweat & Tears, and she's been placed in competitions. She has a BA in Creative Writing from the Open University and an MFA in Poetry from Manchester Writing School. Her books September and The Taste of Rain are available from Offa’s Press. Find out more: cherrydoyle.com

Cherry said this about her poem:

Isolated for months by an undiagnosed illness, I started to fantasise about immersing myself in the homely and kind community of David Lynch & Mark Frost's cult TV show, Twin Peaks. The surreal and supernatural elements of the plot and Lynch's propensity for leaving his mysteries unexplained felt like the perfect metaphor for my experiences. It's part of a wider collaborative project where a friend and I respond to Lynch's work through poetry.