Jemma Walsh

Tangentle

I poem pure, pulpful, sweet
unsexed, unsaccharine. I sign
in wire-twined tightrope,
in rage-hewn deathtrap plank—

I sonnet the width of the word orange,
the point of tangerine. I fraction it here
on the slow curve of a southern light
among strangers. Perfect.

I opaque in spindle-wispen clouds, spire
illusion’s fog. I again again like
a missionary’s croak, a citric sorry thirst.

I riverdraw and damprise the town
hunkering to origin. I lilac-kiss
the mountain’s mourning low.

Karlsruhe Woman

I know I am ‘unrepeatable’
as Rilke would write etc…
yet I like to think
somewhere in the world
I have a sleep doppelganger.

Someone whose somnial states
just happen to map mine
perfectly, secretly.
I’ve decided it’s a woman
who lives in Karlsruhe.

A good bit taller than me,
she has all her teeth and her feet
are perfectly normal.
All I know really is she likes to eat
apples. A lot.

When my conscience wakes me
in the early hours to sip
on a cocktail of worry and regret,
she too wakes, lies there
long-limbed in her time zone.

And in her small kitchen
just down the hall, a dawn light
will soon begin to slowly sketch
a cluster of curves becoming
apples in a bowl, waiting.

Jemma Walsh is an Irish poet based in London. She holds an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths University. Her work has appeared in The Irish Times, berlin lit, 14 Magazine, And Other Poems, Banshee, Anthropocene and elsewhere. @jemmawalsh