Day 210 – by Brigid Coleridge
WINNER OF THE GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2023
‘Russia–Ukraine War Latest: What We Know On Day 210 Of The Invasion’
The Guardian, 21 September 2022
We meet because someone told us to.
You will enjoy each other he says, but
it is the wrong word. When I see you,
you are deep in Cubism – guitars
in shards, your back a pointed stroke.
You turn, frown – I like all this dirty pink
you say. I have a brother, you too – we know
it means love like a fresh scab. I think
you are like me you say you take things
to heart. My laughter papers over
all my holes. I don’t know how
to speak to you. Even our age
is the same.
In the still life gallery, Olga Khokhlova
reads her mother’s letters, all the dance
wrung out of her. I am alive. I have nothing.
Please. Please. The walls teem with other things
her lover’s gaze has turned to stone:
two peaches, a pitching vase,
playing cards. In Russia, we ask
‘how are you’ and it is serious
you tell me. We don’t ask it lightly,
to anyone. I watch the picture you make:
you look at Olga, Olga looks at her letter.
Dull gold frames you both. How are you?
Your hair hangs down your back like
dripping tar, like a kind of dark
I don’t know. She reminds me of you
I say. You laugh. Your lipstick is the brightest
idea in the room. Her life is much worse.
I can call my mother. I am ashamed.
The lining of my imagining is so thin.
In Russian we say ‘nature morte’
you tell me. In English, we cut a flower
from its stem and say it is only
still.
All the women are reading.
They read letters they read
books they read the room they read
his face like an open page.
The language in which they read
is not the language they speak aloud.
Duchamp’s girl wears a dress like the sky;
around her, four dogs –
the same dog – shift and whine, the light
wears thin. She doesn’t hear,
can’t see: the book in her hand
is a different kind of day.
She’s escaped I say. I like the way
the picture holds me still.
You barely pause. The dogs
will be hungry.
Later – now – the pictures are all gone.
I left; you stayed; we hold to different hours.
How is your brother I type in the middle
of my night. Is he hidden. Has he
left. The language in which we text
is not the language we speak aloud.
He doesn’t want to be homeless
you say, a day away. He is so young.
He doesn’t know. Words in blue bubbles
are loose in the room, rearranging things,
growing bulbous. I try to hold in my mind
the way I saw you last: the rain, a tram
going past, both of us colour-weary.
I had a cat called Picasso you say
out of nowhere and you are laughing.
I didn’t know anything, I just liked the
sound. I can see this cat clearly –
the twirly-curliness of him, the way
he twists into a room. It’s a perfect name
for a cat I say just right.
And he was always starving you add.
Always wailing for more. I start to laugh.
My umbrella bursts upwards, the rain is
everywhere. It doesn’t matter:
it isn’t real. Stray letters prowl
around our ankles,
purring,
hungry.
Image: Johnell Pannell/Unsplash
This poem appeared in Island 167 in 2023. Order a print issue here.
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