Category Archives: Poetry

Zoe in Me

by Chris Buchanan
Poetry, 2014

—

I used to gaze into my navel all the time. It’s deep
and big, and clever and quiet. It seemed
like I could never get enough, all warm guts
and playful, static fluff and special smells
that seemed to tell of things you could only see
from the inside of a t-shirt, sized XXXL.
It was the navel of a poet.

Some poets have holes in their hearts, empty
and sucking like wounds, lonely, hungry
and down in the dumps of their chests,
but my blood pumps fine. It’s just red wine
and pasta and pies that sluice through tubes
and patter on my breast ’til I come to rest
an eye on my belly.

But Zoe is stuck in the button. Five years
it’s been now, and I curl up and tell her,
get out! You’re the girl that got away, yeah?
So get the fuck away and get out my curly hair.
She’s cluttering up my space, living in my place
and lately every pissing poem’s still about her.
It’s just embarrassing.

I want my navel back, blissfully empty, mysterious,
black with the absence of certain knowledge –
serious, studious, moody as fuck and bleak
as an ink blot period – a great big belt line firmly
buckled under it and locked up. I want to look
under my skin, get wise, see it all, from A to Y
and write about that.

Let me gaze into eternity,
feel empty,
mutter wisdom and musty skin
again.

Perfect

by Chris Buchanan
Poetry, 2014

—

I roll to his side,
to my elbow.
He warms the space
with some breathy
moment’s compliment:
he just now noticed
my eyes, my smile,
my place in his life.
He can barely mouth it.
I laugh
like a proud mother:
not a giggle, heavier,
more assured, assuring,
kiss his lips shut.
He mumbles a grunt,
token resistance,
exhales. His palm
touches some part
of me, his chest gives,
folds in, lets a scorecard
stick out from the skin,
halogen hot and tanned,
the muscle holds it up:
a ten.
I did this right.
He’s pleased.
Very good for me.

Some People

by Chris Buchanan
Poetry, 2014
Published in The Bolton Review, issue 1

—

This is a gay marriage poem and yes
we are shoving it down your throat.
Some people

are making a stink, yelling at you to think
and cringe. We’re on our knees, begging you to vote,
nudging you and slipping you the ballot for legalised
fudging and lady-things with fingering that
you don’t want to learn, just yet, and
asking you to tick it,
shoving it in your Facebook page, picketing
your inbox and sticking it in your head.

And we know you’re okay with the gays. You’ve no fear
if we’re here and queer, and everyone’s used to it
now but now we want you to thumbs-up our petitions.
We’re rubbing our issues on your television
screen, wiping your politics clean with Vaseline
and all because we want some dumb special day,
a ticker-tape parade with our balls and chains
and lips smacked all over it – ruin our lives, as you say,
be our guests, some of us want that, want you to
shake our ring-fingered hands, eat up our cakes
and just say live and let live. Say it’s okay

because it’s you that has to. At the end of the day
it’s still up to you to give us away, to give it up and
let us have our way, leave us free to do
whatever it is we really do behind closed doors,

without your eyes and tuts and paws and more
all over us.

That’s in your hands
and we don’t like it.
We don’t know where they’ve been!
It creeps us right out.

Some people want to get married.

Either Side of a Cow

by Chris Buchanan
Poetry, 2014

—

Our first date was in a field.
We were being quirky,
displaying our uniqueness
in a field.

Either side of a cow
we stood and made jokes,
tried to look natural, as easy
as it did:

this great slab of something,
chamois leather on shapeless
mass, like dropped cement
on stalks.

Its head was a bone shoebox
plastered with hard meat,
holding up a grinder
full of grass

and it got the job done.
We had a good time, laughed
and wetted our mouths
for the day.

Bubblegum Pop

by Chris Buchanan
Poetry, 2013
From the collection Growing Up Too Fast

—

I want to pipe bubblegum pop through white headphones,
to you in one earbud and me in the other
then drop it on the tarmac as a permanent reminder
when your phone rings and I have to be off.

I want to spend more time in your mouth than crisps
and cling to your teeth at the back, out of sight
and make you crave unhealthy cravings
that your body was never meant to feel so much for.

I want us laminated. Shiny and bright, preserved
with a sun-bleached best-of date that doesn’t matter,
like the empty bag of sweets in your garden by the conifers
with only an out-of-fashion logo to show its age.

We can always see that bag there in the undergrowth,
past its best. Pale, plasticky rubbish wraps look ugly
in the soil, refusing to rot, but you still
don’t want to chuck ‘em.

The Right Thing

by Chris Buchanan
Poetry, 2013
From the collection Growing Up Too Fast

—

Doing the right thing is easy,
but it isn’t much of a thing.
You get a little bold, a little brave,
but then, oh, you have to do the thing
and it’s done.

Nobody says a thing about it
or cries or stares or anything.
No-one shouts about how you’re strong or smart:
they just get back to their everyday nothing
and feel good.

But you don’t feel a thing.
Maybe just a sort of itching
like a tingling telling you something boring
as people forget whatever kind of right thing
you just did.

The worst thing is
when even you don’t notice.
You just did it on instinct, smiling, whistling,
twiddling your thumbs and not thinking anything
really at all.

That’s why I do the wrong thing.

Pram

by Chris Buchanan
Poetry, 2013
From the collection Growing Up Too Fast
Published in the Live From Worktown 2014 anthology

—

A bakery, takeaway, charity shop,
Chicco logo, scuffed shiny grey
plastic handles, bent-over bus-stop.
I’m showing you the park today.

Chicco logo, scuffed shiny grey,
cold sun-glare in both of our eyes.
I’m showing you the park today.
For now just look up at the sky.

Cold sun-glare in both of our eyes.
You lie back and see mummy’s chins.
For now just look up at the sky.
Keep flashing that fat kiddie grin.

You lie back and see mummy’s chins
and laugh at my upside-down smile.
Keep flashing that fat kiddie grin
and stop fiddling, just for a while,

and laugh at my upside-down smile!
Don’t notice my dirty old nails
and stop fiddling, just for a while-
look! Here’s the Pirates’ Nature Trail.

Don’t notice my dirty old nails,
plastic handles, bent-over bus-stop.
Look. Here’s the Pirates’ Nature Trail,
a bakery, takeaway, charity shop.

Coloured pottery lid, Egyptology

by Chris Buchanan
Poetry, 2013
From the collection Growing Up Too Fast

—

A big blue circle drawn
with long, wavy arches,
uneven edges all round,
faded and dull.

The curves are sunbeams,
painted for Ra by hands
that couldn’t keep
inside the chunky lines.

The piece is shaped
horribly. Fat fingers
have left lumps
on its buckled edges

and it lags here
behind old museum glass,
not wasting a speck
of static, rough pot.

The ancient who made it
couldn’t be proud of this.
But we’ve kept the exhibit
as long as I remember.

Pale people in factory
cotton and plastic
come see it every day.
Squinting, thinking.

Someone like me glued
together these cracks,
chose where to stick it,
this thing that we made,

like your kid’s drawing
held by fridge magnets.
A still stick-man family
and a big yellow sun.

Slug Guts, or Entosthia Gymnosalianga

by Chris Buchanan
Poetry, 2013
From the collection Growing Up Too Fast

—

A boy spread strawberry jam on his toast, his father watched
and they stood a minute.
How come strawberries taste wet and bitter, he asked,
but jam is good and sticky?

The father looked over the tinged brown glasses he kept
from another century.
Because strawberry jam, he brass-rasped, nearly wept,
is raw slug slurry.

The stuff of ground, slain slugs is just too delicious,
so we call it squashed berries.
We grown-ups say it’s jam, tar our lives complicit
in sweet, shared atrocity.

Slugs’ organs are too tasty not to eat, the boy heard
and stale nose-breath eased onto him.
Strawberry jam is a clever word, lad. An old word.
A good word. A euphemism.

The father’s rusty eyes, round, brown, rested
and the boy glanced about.
His fingers stuck to the jar’s surface
where the juice had gotten out.

His flecked red tongue firmed in his mouth, clinging
at stained teeth like a prisoner.
The residue in his throat sucked, unreasoning,
begging for slime and moisture.

The father said, they bury the skins in the mud. His eyes
seemed heavy on his skull.
Each speck is scraped from flesh, slid off knives
’til the jam men’s pits are full.

The father’s iron, scratched hands scooped the toast
and the jaws did their lifework.
There are always good words, groaned his hard throat
with pip cracks and red slurps.

The boy reeled, reading ingredients, his father fed
and they stood a minute.
There were clever words in the kitchen and there was bread.
The jam was good and sticky.

Pins and Needles

by Chris Buchanan
Poetry, 2013
From the collection Growing Up Too Fast

—

Red Riding Hood stared
at the wolf man
at the crossroads
at the path of needles
and the path of pins.
The meaning was lost on her.

His yellow eyes were saturated
with wisdom.
The wolf knew
grandma would know
and the woodcutter could cut.
The girl had no idea.

The black paths had names
to do with sewing.
To solve the riddle,
to get through the woods,
you have to work out the best way,
the safe path.
Her feet were tingling.

Grey wolves are old sinners.
They know the stories
and know the needles
are easier in the long run.
The girl was big enough
to learn to sew the hard way.

Or else she was small enough
to be eaten up.

Whole.
Her choice.