Eloise Hendy
play fair
at four am i glow neon
hot pink cat on hot steel capped
bed swathed in synthetics &
panting my hot pink tongue
against the tinny roof of my mouth
ha! my body is livid
i am screaming adverts
at nothing i am scrawling love
into the arms of the sky
come buy come buy come
i woke up wanting
to kiss
ha! i am a motel in the back
end of beyond seedy & blowing
time away in clumps
at five am i glow like a lolly
i pop like a lolly like corn like chewing
gum i am burst
a bubble on a syrup chin
a fairground ride spinning
sticky fingers i am a prize
ha! i am soap suds &
you tell me
i smell like church
pretty crude
oil me up baby fill me
with greasy hands & raw
power streaming unguent
racing through my pistons
like a shot
go go baby drill
into my ready turf
like an easy metaphor
dripping all over
the barrels of your thumbs
run me down quick
at the crossroads pump
baby lubricate
motion sickness slick
with sticky currency
a pound of dirt
for this bag of flesh
baby sink into my piping
hot & viscous & tarred
like a victim
deepwater horizon
slick on the sofa
grubbed up on hydrocarbons
grease & crude remnants
of the day cast off
like a lizard limb
washed up loose
on the carpet gripped
by ethanol smiles & reeking
of petroleum sealed
abundance & discord–
ance shaking terrible
detriment corruption
purged to a peak
& full embargo
smoking peat fire up up
long drag
time for cutting
stacked on the wetland
coasting on polymer styrene
& extracting out to vapour sweat
like a shop
shut up on the table
soaring & ingesting dirty
straight run gasoline split
racketeer this combustion
particles streaming
liquid on the bedframe
burnt up to a glib sob
& sheen on the sheets
Eloise Hendy is a postgraduate student in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. She also works for independent publisher Vagabond Voices, and is the creative director of 50GS, a digital literary journal. @EloiseHendy