Cherry Smyth
Shine On
After Sarah Lucas at Tate Modern
Your tight little legs hang
like a fag from a dry mouth,
no toes, no head – who hurt you, Bunny?
Mucous-yellow melons
with their mapped skin,
poke from worn-sofa dreams.
Your love is a burnt tower of muscle.
Someone left your chicken hole
on the supermarket shelf.
There is no music
just the cold green pulse
of a fluorescent cock
and torrid tales of bonking
without fizz or pop.
You sit on the loo,
dressed like a bloke,
strong as beer,
smoking.
Cherry Smyth’s debut poetry collection was When the Lights Go Up (Lagan Press 2001). A pamphlet, The Future of Something Delicate was published by Smith/ Doorstop, 2005 and a second collection is forthcoming. She teaches poetry in prisons, Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital and at Greenwich University.
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