prose poems from an Open Mic evening at Epicenter, Paignton

emission/regression/ovate

She slept fitfully for the weeks before her birthday. She grew pale, poetically white; she coughed quietly but regularly. On the eve of the birthday the regression was complete. Tiny eggs grew in the space between her bed & the window; white, so poetically white, coughing a quiet emission of noise; ovate-shaped, opening on her birthday to reveal perfectly formed

lore/behemoth/absinthe

In Paris, he wanted to taste the city. Disappearing down noisy streets, stumbling across noiseless alleys, he tries the first opened door, passes pipe-smoking drinkers loudly arguing & spouting lore – Germanic folk tales of children abandoned by disapproving parents – heads to the bar, orders the absinthe, watches the watchers watching the green liquid smoothly go down: before the pale dawn light lit up the pale city, he saw the behemoth draw crimson blood.

interlocutor/tundra/sanatorium

'My dearest wife, you will not see me again. The weather has been abysmal. The food is almost gone. I am so tired & will soon sleep forever. One of my colleagues has already left the tent. He did not return.
'I want to say so much more. Make my love echo across the frozen white desert. I must make do with pen and paper. But imagine my words carrying for miles in the cold silence. Tundra soaking us up: tying my heart in knots, sealing my mouth & slowing my brain.
'I think back to our first days on the Cam: the lap of the afternoon, a stolen kiss & a wish from me for more.

'I wish, my love, the white desert would release its grip, take me to a sanatorium to learn to breathe again.

'Instead my tiredness begins to appeal. And the light is darkening. My dearest wife, be an interlocutor to my children. Think of me always as warm, happy – my words carrying miles across the bright countryside like the skylark's brave call'.