Queen of Hearts E-Book

Hannah Hodgson

• Herausgeber: The Poetry Business
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 21

Beschreibung

In this powerful collection Hannah Hodgson gives us the complexity of the disabled body; these poems address both its beauty alongside the rage that results from being continually overlooked and marginalised. Formally varied, inventive and brightly observed, these poems take on love, sex, family and the Covid pandemic, often with warm humour and a surrealist wit.

Leseprobe

Published 2022 by

New Poets List

An imprint of The Poetry Business

Campo House,

54 Campo Lane,

Sheffield S1 2EG

Copyright © Hannah Hodgson 2022

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-1-914914-22-5

eBook ISBN 978-1-914914-23-2

Typeset by The Poetry Business

Printed by Biddles, Sheffield

Smith|Doorstop Books are a member of Inpress:

www.inpressbooks.co.uk

Distributed by IPS UK, 1 Deltic Avenue,

Rooksley, Milton Keynes MK13 8LD

The Poetry Business gratefully acknowledges the support of Arts Council England.

Contents

Year 11

I Want to Tell Someone I Love Them

Predators Beneath the Sand

The Paperback Version of this Body is Really Quite Flimsy

Beauty

Exhibitionist

Preparing a Body for Deep Sea Exploration

Danger:

Fashion Always Comes Back Around

If This Were Read in Court it Would be Without Emotion

Age Progression Software

Do you ever think about all of the photographs in which you’re accidentally in the background?

Convalescence in May

Colonel Mustard is Waiting in the Dining Room

The Mark Holland Trust

Last Night, I Finally Remembered the Screaming

Not All Bombs Get Dramatic Conclusions

Queen of Hearts

Missing Posters

Clairvoyant for the Unconscious

Listen, I love you. Joy is coming.

James Bond with a Stairlift

A Family Christmas

Jesus Loved Men Too

What I Wish I Could Say in this Pandemic

For K,

Minute to Minute. We’ve got this.

Year 11

Secrets are like injuries from bullets. On entering the body

there’s a small entry point, on leaving

there’s a huge, open tunnel.

This is a tracing of deceit, as a lie grows bigger

and bigger. He lied about having heart failure,

told me this, fifteen minutes before

a chemistry exam. As I walk the winding path back

to the start, the bullet’s trace grows narrower

and narrower, organs like obstructing hawthorn.

I re-examine the scene in which he told me,

outside food tech, beside a bin. He produced

a pill box and blood pressure cuff as proof.

How easily that bullet shredded me, his tongue

an awful trigger. He left me bleeding

for eight months. Eight months

of his pretending to be dying, whilst I actually was.

I retained water, my skin tightening

like a swimming costume drying

to salty crispness. He took that year from me.

A year in which I should’ve been drinking

blue wicked behind the cricket pavilion.

He forced hospitals inside of me before I needed

a corridor linking my organs. Foreign objects

are rejected by the body. Secrets, they always come out.