Is Harry Kane real or is he FIFA?
Either way you’re shouting. You tell me not to
shit on the importance of working-class culture.
I don’t see the point in polo or golf
or healthy snacks or charging my phone
fully either. You’re watching
almost-goals. I could come
to feel at ease between BBQ crisps and
when you’re not shouting.
If all my Sundays are this I might be ok. You reply:
Huh.
The men have their little pixel-faces screwed up
like something’s gone wrong. I tell you I just said
something really nice.
You say shut your face.
It’s not clear if you’re talking to me
or the referee.
Waiting for my brother to die
I was a thousand bloody pixels
driving beside the line of the water
steering with those sweat slapped
joysticks my thumbs red and flat
I can’t quite get the click shift move
handle to swim the whole way
around the thing never fully
dunked down
I clasp a breath of myself
hands red against the AB
four fingers dribble the stick –
I glitch.
Click black.
Plunged into myself staring back
sat in a muffled pool of screen.
Controller-snatched, my brother’s next.
Streaming
My biggest thrill is getting away
from everyone I love
and picking the scabs
off my eczema.
I’ve been a lot more leaky lately. I can’t stop
crying. There’s normally something
else to blame it on – fungus pollen allergies, which I don’t have,
or loneliness, which I often do.
I ask Jacob to describe me.
We still haven’t touched.
He tried to kiss me on the roof at Tate Modern.
I recoiled.
Can a person really be dry eyed?
Not completely, like an egg
before the mayonnaise.
Like a hardboiled egg but furry.
I manage to limit the scratching
to Jacob’s trips to the bathroom. We are in a
vegetarian all-you-can-eat. I’m asking for
a five word portion. He thinks for an uncomfortable
moment. I match him on the pace of his eating,
cucumber for cucumber, meatball for meatball.
Jacob mumbles ‘dry’ three times,
and can’t think of two more words.
things are going very well
I see more people that I know
looking older.
How many
children they have.
How little they
pick at their hands.
I’ll know
I’m truly old
when they are all
driving instructors.
I walk out in front
of an L-plated car, stopped
just in time. The instructor
leans across to wave
a fillet of hand.
His nod is the only sign today
I’m doing ok.
Go ahead, says the
brake pedal,
go right ahead.
Rachel Cleverly is a producer and poet. She is a Barbican Young Poet, an Old Vic Theatre Maker and an alumnus of Apples and Snake's 'The Writing Room' and BBC Words First. She has an MA in Creative Writing from UEA, and has been published by SPAM, ACHE Magazine, The Feminist Library, Ink, Sweat & Tears and Black Sunflowers Press among others. Rachel works as an Education Officer at The Poetry Society, where she manages the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award. Website: www.rachelcleverly.com. Twitter/Instagram: @rachel_cleverly
