Sophie Robinson

 

black cherry

stuck on a loop of the new on a loop of the
moving soundtrack of my singularity
black cherry. sour cherry
black cherry. sour cherry
i like to drink buckets of anything
& if i smoke a cigarette i’ll smoke it until
it’s gone. spoil my memory of the cherry
by eating the stone, the stalk. i don’t watch
porn just flicker off & on to some
abstracted memory of it: some
body bend double like a horse in a cage
a public pool rimmed with cum. wet cement.
faded jeans. black forest. cherry chocolate.
i want to text you
a picture of my dinnerto show you
what’s moving around
inside me.wet cement. faded jeans.
sour cherry. black forest.
wet cement. sour cherry.
faded jeans. my dreams are clouded
not pictures just the feelings of pictures
tense pitch. dawn rim. black forest
ghost warden. sour sour cherry
sour cherry. black chocolate.
wet cement. wet cement.
don’t mistake my message
for its content: i’ve got nothing
to tell you i just wanted
to be in touch.

 


cancer, leo rising

sunshine suddenly today is unbelievable everybody
walking around in it like they’ve just been born
i do know god but we’re not close.
i’m writing porn dialogue for sensitive couples:
don’t douche today i love you like you are.
see! it’s easy to be me, if you’re interested.
just pick something you love & move in with it
immediately. just find something you like doing & ruin it
by doing it foreverit doesn’t matter
how you come to know a thing, only that you know
it. i cum tragically at the moment with a kind of sob & all
at once, it’s like spilling a drink     i’m so sorry     i think this shirt
is too cool for me like it sometimes says i’ll wear sophie today
& the rest of the time smokes cigarettes in my wardrobe
& being a total bitch to me in front of my jeans. i’m so tired but
i’m not cute enough to wear pyjamas well in front of people
so i put on my fake silk kimono & act natural. it would be nice to kick
back once in a while like a fugly mofo. i’m degraded
from so much wanting & it feels really nice actually. i’m so
unboned from my wanton & deliberate care for you
you can smell me from the hallway. from across
the ocean. the school of my life is stupid & unknowable
& so are you & i love you my paranoid clit bobbing up
& down on thin air like a jet like a tin can. i want to fuck you
in your shirt & tie & i want to hear you say croissant. i want
to piss on your thighs. not sure why. but i want you to tell me
to do it & then tell me to do it again & then i do it.
i’m bowled over by your generosity & your smallness
the smell of your hair. i want to write a poem like this
& then write it again but make it more like this
more awkward more bad & more itself.
i want to know a thing so well it makes me sick
i want to love a thing so often it disappears
i want to run around & run around until i get to lie down
i want to bark the name of anything until i pass out

 


nothing nothing

do you remember now how the whole place buzzed through
us in the little yellow flat back when our bodies felt cool
& unused: we spooled out light with our hands on
the switch & time moved smoothly (never thrown back
against the wall the red of sharp remembering never thrown
up in a taxi) we got a kitten to replace the mice & he too
trembled on the wires of our lives the burning lines
we sat on waiting to catch fire even after
our best sex was over & the windows became hatches
& the sky turned red at night & we knew who we were
only on certain days & my thighs never ached.
that was one second past the middle of us. i know that now.
with nowhere to go & practically pooping gold
& yellow stars in that shitty flat we got charged
& charged for. i could count this out forever.
i miss you. i guess i’ll see you soon.

 


Sophie Robinson is a poet. She lives between London and Norwich, where she teaches Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Recent work has appeared in n+1, The White Review, Poetry Review, The Brooklyn Rail and Ploughshares.


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