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14th July, 2023

Friday Poem – ‘My body tells me that she’s filing for divorce’ by Kathryn Bevis

Both halves of a cracked egg shell with a yolk between them. The yolk is in the foreground of the image.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘My body tells me that she’s filing for divorce’ by Kathryn Bevis from her debut pamphlet Flamingo. This poem is shortlisted for the Forward Prize ‘Best Single Poem 2023’. See the full shortlist on the Forward Prize website.

My body tells me that she is filing for divorce She's taken a good, hard look at the state of our relationship. She knows it's not for her. The worst thing is, she doesn't tell me this straight up or even to my face. No. She books us appointments with specialists in trip-lit rooms. They peer at us over paper masks with eyes whose kindness I can't bear. They speak of our marriage in images: a pint of milk that's on the turn, an egg whose yolk is punctured, leaking through the rest, a tree whose one, rotten root is poisoning the leaves. I try to understand how much of us is sick. I want to know what they can do to put us right. She, whose soft shape I have lain with every night, who's roamed with me in rocky woods, round rocky heads. She, who's witnessed the rain pattering on the reeded, the cut-glass chitter of long-tailed tits, the woodpecker rehearsing her single, high syllable. How have we become this bitter pill whose name I can't pronounce? Soon, she'll sleep in a bed that isn't mine. That's why these nights, we perform our trial separations. She, buried in blankets, eyelids. flickering fast. Me, up there on, no––wait–– /through/ the ceiling, attic roof. I'm flying, crying looking down. /Too soon/, I whisper to her warm and sleeping form. Not yet. Too soon. Too soon./

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Related Books

Flamingo

Kathryn Bevis

Buy now