Mave Fellowes

In the holidays

One boring morning we started a cult,
Bea, Lamby and me. We called it
GODGODGOD. We weren’t solemn

but had rituals, like tapping the soft
noses of our followers, arranging them
by height along the back of the sofa, 

and collecting cups of holy water 
from the kitchen to sprinkle 
pardons on their slumped heads.

Jack kept begging to join. He agreed 
to take a sin test but failed repeatedly, 
for wearing a watch which showed

the time, for having his hair on at lunch,
for making an unworthy movement 
of his jaw. He took the rejection poorly,

unseating our followers and flinging
each one at the door so that they landed
splayed and undignified, on the mat.

UNDO

It’s strange outside.
Night sky glitches the treetops,
black squares behind grey branches.

The rest is technicolour,
flowers and fences and blades of grass lined up
in neat tallies, without shadows.

The rain has been pelting down so long,
the pony is thin in the field.

We asked for a more bucolic view.
Perhaps we used the wrong word.
This isn’t what we pictured.

Bluish clay has risen to the surface
in seams, parting the lawn. The birds
are too big, they keep

swooping from the right.
Moles stick up from their hills, paddling the air
and a row of deer permanently

graze the gravel.
Sometimes it looks like one deer
with extra legs.

The pony appears tired.
It leans against the sodden stable.

Everything is so clear
but when we approach the window to see the sun,
it isn’t there.

This isn’t what we wanted.
The view is bright, we can’t take our eyes off it
and the pony is flat in the field.

Mave Fellowes is the author of Chaplin & Company (Cape, 2013). Recent work has appeared in The Dark Horse, Propel, The Rialto, The Pomegranate London, The Berlin Review, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal and The Black Cat Press Anthology.

Mave wrote these comments about her poems:

Undo is a response to the weirdness and wrongness of AI when it attempts to simulate our reality.  I think, on the whole, that interacting with machines makes us less happy and more confused.  I regret the time I have spent stroking and tapping the small screen that lives in my pocket.  I would like to press Undo on all on nearly all of it.

In the Holidays was inspired by the arbitrary rules of a cult that was invented by my children and thankfully only lasted one day. Cults don't make for very fun games.