Lydia Unsworth

louse vs. mite

To hoard is to ward off absence. To fear the loss of the little you’ve got. To find company, control, ownership, craft, insulation perhaps, in the piles of headlines, or stacks of CD racks thick like fists against borrowed brick. Five mattresses against three walls. Eight pillows, their brown-orange instant coffee stains in thinning topography repeat. It’s cosy, I’m warm like this. Under museum-beige sheets. Mannequins in vintage mines waving robot arms from nine till five. Slower than extinction. The Victorian schoolmistress came at me with her spotlight eyes. Call those nails? she said. Sit upright! Keyrings, buttons, postcards, vinyls. However you want it. Dust that reminds. All colours one shade darker than originally intended. To Family From Family, Have a Nice Year, Don’t Let Anything Else Die. The difference between madness and eccentricity is the same as between that of the collector and them what should be confined. The difference between a weed and a pest is inherent in how fast the seed flies. In a swoop of starlings, the seventh in line may be safe from the peregrine but it never decides. Meanwhile, the intricacies of uncertainty management stretch to a single file.

Lydia Unsworth has published two collections of poetry: Certain Manoeuvres (KFS Press, 2018) and Nostalgia for Bodies (2018 Erbacce Poetry Prize), and two pamphlets. Her latest pamphlet YIELD is now available from KFS Press and her debut novel Distant Hills (Atlatl Press) is due out in June. Recent work can be found in Ambit, SPAM, Bath Magg and Blackbox Manifold. Twitter: @lydiowanie