The Day’s Events
I have a knack for seeing these things before they occur.
I am not bragging, There’s no third eye or
Sixth sense. I just watch, listen,
Replay. Every conversation, meeting,
I am actively eavesdropping.
I have played it over, become surveillance.
As if I sit in an office chair, spinning, a long black
Cylinder shooting down from the seat
Splaying out in four legs, an animatronic
Praying mantis. Multiple screens play,
Like bathroom tiles but with moving pictures
Entitled: The Day’s Events.
Because of this constant monitoring I am tired when I see you two
Together, the looks, the ease, the sudden
Disinterest in your respective partners.
And I wonder if you already now
How this will play out. Or if I’ll have to wait
For the footage to be played.
Eating Feelings
There’s been an evacuation in me.
A case of – It’s not you, it’s me.
Sense has left me, the good old common kind.
And now I am a shell, a scraped out creme egg.
I open a tube of pringles, unwrap a milky way
And it is like relieving toothache by a dentist’s injection,
Wrenching out a tooth from the nerve,
And I am left, slobbering.
Charlotte Cosgrove is a writer and teacher from Liverpool, England. Her work has appeared in Trouvaille Review, Dreich, The Literary Yard and Wingless Dreamer. She has work forthcoming in Confingo, Beyond Words, The Broadkill Review, Words and Whispers and New Contexts 2: an anthology. She was recently shortlisted for the Julian Lennon poetry prize. She is editor of Rough Diamond Poetry Journal.
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