Poem
Caroline Bird
Character Study
Character Study
Character Study
Her self-esteem sleeps under leopard print,herb-like and shivery as ghost-ships.
She dreams of sitar music and tree surgery
but wakes up wanting to be used
by the dawn boys, the brethren, the doe-like patrol
who can muss up her tights by the stockade
and make her feel dead. She feels responsible
for devolution in all of its forms –
perforated aspen trees, halcyon rapes,
maladjusted skateboards for the elderly.
She feels damned yet she’s benighted
with puissant hydroplanes. It’s like watching
Joan of Arc cut herself with Bic razors
but my compassion is hardly benign.
© 2011, Caroline Bird
Published with kind permission of the author.
Caroline Bird
(England, 1986)
Caroline Bird was born in Leeds in 1986, grew up in London, and is currently studying English Literature at Oxford University. She has published three collections with Carcanet: Looking Through Letterboxes (2002), Trouble Came To The Turnip (2006) and Watering Can (2009). Watering Can was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and she is the only writer to have been shortlisted for the Dylan Tho...
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Poems of Caroline Bird
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Character Study
Her self-esteem sleeps under leopard print,herb-like and shivery as ghost-ships.
She dreams of sitar music and tree surgery
but wakes up wanting to be used
by the dawn boys, the brethren, the doe-like patrol
who can muss up her tights by the stockade
and make her feel dead. She feels responsible
for devolution in all of its forms –
perforated aspen trees, halcyon rapes,
maladjusted skateboards for the elderly.
She feels damned yet she’s benighted
with puissant hydroplanes. It’s like watching
Joan of Arc cut herself with Bic razors
but my compassion is hardly benign.
Character Study
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