The Forward Book of Poetry 2019

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Just two of the poems from this excellent collection...

The Quilt by Abigail Parry

The quilt’s a ragtag syzygy
of everything I’ve been or done,
a knotted spell in every seam,
the stuff that pricks and pulls. The quilt

began in ’96. I scrapped
the blotch batiks and brocatelles
each backward-bending paisley hook
that tied me to my town. The quilt

came with me when I packed and left
– a bad patch, that – you’ll see I’ve sewn
a worried blot of grey and black
to mark a bruisy year. The quilt

advances, in a shock campaign
through block-fluoresecent souvenirs
of seedy clubs and bad psi-trance
and peters out in blue. The quilt

came with me when I ditched the scene
and dressed myself as someone new
– or someone else, at any rate
and someone better, too – I felt

a charlatan in borrowed suits,
and flower prints, and pastel hues,
but things had turned respectable,
and so I stitched that in. The quilt

has tessellated all of it.
Arranged, like faithful paladins,
are half a dozen bits and scraps
from those who took a turn, then split –

the dapper one, the rugby fan,
the one who liked his gabardine,
the one who didn’t want to be another patch in your fucking quilt
but got there all the same. The quilt

is lined with all the bitter stuff
I couldn’t swallow at the time –
the lemon-yellow calico
I never wore again. The guilt

snuck into every thread of it
and chafed all through the honeymoon.
I scissored out the heart of it
and stitched it, fixed it, final, here –

with every other bright mistake
I wear, like anyone.

Something wonderful has happened it is called you by Emily Critchley

and mostly these days I just like to look

at you and sometimes make words

out of your name or rock you

in my arms till the thought of I

with or without poetry

no longer matters.

It’s not like I have forgotten

how to worry

about disappearing forests, landfill or the ozone layer

I pray that when you grow up there may still be

polar bears, for instance, forests and an ozone layer

keep the sun off yr precious face

and not just in the zoo

I worry about other things too, but mostly

it is hard to be unhappy these days especially

now the spring’s advancing and you’re learning

about hands – how to hold things in them

and take everything it’s yours