2 Poems
Eden Chicken
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