Your elbows of no use for long marches, your sofa
a tin can of empathy. Still questioning onions and
chagrin for the colour of tears, and the cat at your
fingertips asks how to abide us. Her purring
suggests she is waiting for happiness
to thieve anthracite dust from bookshelves, windowsills,
biscuit barrel caps. In that waveform find
the beauty in fluffsters: If you catch them by claws and
hearts, they throw all their Dasein into belly rubs.
Everything they are into that moment. Outside our
French window all the gardens become different
every time you stretch a wool stocking-footed limb or
nap your eyelids near a pillow. A careful paw moves
figurines like pieces on an oversized chessboard
where I try to remain the last man standing. We have
no trance, all we have are dances. If we do not share a
dream, then how will we end it?
Sven Kretzschmar hails from Germany. His work has been published internationally, e.g., in Writing Home. The ‘New Irish’ Poets (Dedalus Press, 2019), Hold Open the Door (UCD Press, 2020), Das Gedicht, The Irish Times and more. He was awarded 2nd place at the Francis Ledwidge International Poetry Award 2022.