2 Poems

Frogsong

You’re smashed grey, black against black gravel

you lie there limbs splayed. Still we see eye to eye.

Time has sucked out the corporeal juice;

rain rewets the wrong way. And so you died

unnoticed—unwanted even if seen.

A moment’s thought: I pick my foot over.

Like all, I don’t want to touch the obscene

and what is more vulgar than exposure?

That is your death. Unknown what came before.

Like, what brought you to this grave paving stone

from the presumed green pond of nevermore?

Did you spend your watery days alone?

Does the air, darkening with time and smoke,

still hold the last note of your flattened croak?

How to sail a bed

I never learned how to sail a bed                           or why                  to stay            afloat.

            Black and blue             i                       blue and white                  never                      ends

further                       than any eye can be                        seen,         splashing       crescendoes

against            the wooden frame thrashing, wind roars

                                                                       louder than blood:

             choking, near retching                   gag               but                 no               thing dislodges,

                                                                                                                          no thing changes.

              Only             the scent shifts,                        strengthens, putrid          and

pungent of pitiless antiseptic                                                        would the           salt

                       suppress               the deathsmell ?                the world tastes

              the same inside and out,                             hide                                , clouds upon clouds

                               ice impersonating comfort,                     let’s make a pillow fort

will collapse                                             then I am to be                             smothered.

     Light laterdarkens: there are bruises             juice-staining    my neck  everso                     gasp

            grasp                there is no thing left                                        sheets spasmed to shreds—

Blue             blue                                                                    blue

                                                  blue

                                                                                                                    blue

Eden Chicken (they/them) is a queer poet whose work explores hybridity, from textual forms to divergent identities and coexistences with(in) nature. Recently graduated from the MA Poetry course at University of East Anglia, their work has been published by Egg Box, Sentire, Many Nice Donkeys, and featured on The Poetry Society’s website. Instagram: @edenchicken