Ache

Scarlett Ward

• Publisher: Verve Poetry Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781912565238
• eBook ISBN: 9781912565825
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Poesía

Scarlett Ward is an incredible young West Midlands poet as comfortable on the page as in performance, with a real ear for language and an imagination to match. Her debut collection, created with help and advice from Liz Berrry and others, doesn't disappoint, as it takes its Insta-concerns (Scarlett has 10k+ followers) of depression, insecurity, mental ill-health and the deep and powerful ache of a love found, and turns them in to quite startling poetry -at times as light as petals, at others as heavy and violent as a hob nail boot. Read, gasp, enjoy.

i. to ache is to heal

We’re going to have to talk about it at some point

aren’t we?

Except I don’t want to.

Can’t we talk instead of dandelion manes;

the way they nose their way through

cracks in the pavement,

only to be scattered in infinite directions

when kicked violently enough,

scorned spores spiraling;

frantic heads of fine-spun lace

dizzying themselves away,

as though away is the only place far enough

from that damned kicking boot.

Can we focus on the flowers

and not think of anything else -

not how I ran home to my mom’s house,

shame dampening the crotch of my underwear,

and not the beads from my snapped bracelet

that I clutched tightly in my fist.

I don’t know much about Catholicism

but for the sake of this poem say I do.

Say I’m the communion bread,

the thinly stretched wafer

molded into nipple-sized circles

that fit easily into the mouth

when placed on the tongue.

Say you place me on your tongue,

don’t wait for me to soften before you chew.

Say I leave you feeling

absolved.

Say you do as you will with my body,

my soft girlish body,

all unrisen dough and uncooked,

as you do with the body of Christ;

pull it apart until it relents in your hands.

Say I am kneaded out by fist

and baked in stone fire,

chewed by your jaws,

torn apart by canine.

Say what you did was holy.

Say what you did was out of love.

Why then have you hidden me in your pocket

where you pray that God will never look?

In which the oyster refuses to open

then after that,

every word required a prising

apart of my reluctant jaw,

a sucking sound of a parting

seal, a pulling separate of

a gummy membrane

fastening, a cracking of

cockle-spine prying open

to get to the

Pearl.

I taste the metal of a blade

slipped in neatly

then twisted, feel

forceful widening of

mandibles.

“I’m doing alright, I promise.”

The clink of a sharp snap,

returning once more

to a tight

clasp.

I ask myself

After he touched you, you wanted to wrap yourself in black

velvet / stand in a room with cardboard boxes glued to the

ceiling to make your senses dead to all but that part. / You

would have collected every stimulated nerve and kept it frozen

in that state, / wouldn’t you?

You would have trained them to dance for you the way they

did then. / You would have needed a louder whistle. / You want

to hold your arm in front of a mirror, / reflect the part of you

he touched, back onto you again. / Isn’t that a kind of

cannibalism? You feel certain that you’re eating yourself. / You

are the only one that brings you sustenance anymore, / cloning

that caress that nourished you/ but the result mutates further

each time. / A river will meander from its course to leave its

favourite rock untouched. You don’t think you could allow

anything else to touch you now. / You swear when the sun sets

over an ocean it sets nowhere else, it’s so focused on pouring

itself into this one for you. / When they ask Where did he hurt

you? You won’t point to your heart, / you’ll point to the spot on

your neck where he ever so gently /

kissed you.

Purple
(Love Notes To My Depression....

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• i. to ache is to heal
• ii. to ache is to endure
• iii. to ache is to adore
• iv. to ache is to recover
• Scarlett Introduces...
• Acknowledgements
• About Verve Poetry Press