Poem
Helen Mort
DIVISION STREET
DIVISION STREET
DIVISION STREET
You brought me here to break it offone muggy Tuesday. A brewing storm,
the pigeons sleek with rain.
My black umbrella flexed its wings.
Damp-skinned, I made for the crush
of bars, where couples slip white pills
from tongue to tongue, light as drizzle,
your fingers through my hair,
the way you nearly sneaked
a little something in my blood.
At the clinic, they asked if I’d tattoos
and I thought again of here –
the jaundiced walls, the knit-knit whine
of needle dotting bone, and, for a moment,
almost wish you’d left your mark;
subtle as the star I cover with t-shirts,
the memory of rain, or your head-down walk
along Division Street, slower each week, pausing
by the pubs, their windows so dim you see
nothing but yourself reflected.
© 2008, Helen Mort
From: the shape of every box
Publisher: tall-lighthouse, London
From: the shape of every box
Publisher: tall-lighthouse, London
Helen Mort
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1985)
Helen Mort was born in Sheffield in 1985. As a child, she loved language in general and poetry in particular and can’t remember a time when she wasn’t trying to write poetry, including dictating “an incoherent poem about trains” to her mum whilst at primary school. Although “not sure where the urge to write came from”, the sounds of words entranced her. She particularly delighted in “the way so...
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DIVISION STREET
You brought me here to break it offone muggy Tuesday. A brewing storm,
the pigeons sleek with rain.
My black umbrella flexed its wings.
Damp-skinned, I made for the crush
of bars, where couples slip white pills
from tongue to tongue, light as drizzle,
your fingers through my hair,
the way you nearly sneaked
a little something in my blood.
At the clinic, they asked if I’d tattoos
and I thought again of here –
the jaundiced walls, the knit-knit whine
of needle dotting bone, and, for a moment,
almost wish you’d left your mark;
subtle as the star I cover with t-shirts,
the memory of rain, or your head-down walk
along Division Street, slower each week, pausing
by the pubs, their windows so dim you see
nothing but yourself reflected.
From: the shape of every box
DIVISION STREET
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