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Heather Chapman

Unsent Letter as Means of Transmutation

​

Now I have known you an improbable couple
of decades at last we can lie to each other,
or at least beside each other. I picture you:
staring at the ceiling, you pass a Renaissance hand
over your ribs and everything is invention.
In Vienna, now – you’ll recognise the stamp. Imagining
us as the porcelain fountain in the market square,
electric with wishes. I get my cavities filled
with gold, jump to fifty. Remember our first year –
our breath folded and fired like aeroplanes.
Our fourth, silk – we linked pinkies, knuckled
to a stitch. I can’t stop buying things for you:
bottles of air from mountains, bottles of water
from beaches. In twenty more years
I will be a fistful of air and you will be
that fist opening.

SHORTLIST

  • Axotol by Ben Rys Palmer

  • Wish You Were Here, postcard to my unborn child by Angela Cheveau

  • A list of things you don't want your colleagues to know by Khushi Bajaj

  • Doings Coke with You by Ross McCleary

  • To a Friend by Jennifer Wong

VERVE Poetry Spoken Word Festival supported by ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND
VERVE Poetry Festival, Online Poetry Workshops, Poetry Book Shop, Poetry Publisher

VERVE POETRY & SPOKEN WORD FESTIVAL is an independent festival produced by VERVE POETRY PRESS.

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