Samantha Jackson
Biography - click to expand
Samantha Jackson is a poet and editor living in London. Her work was selected for a poetry project celebrating Selfridge’s 100th anniversary, has been featured on a poetry DVD, Asking a Shadow to Dance, and has been published most recently in Ambit. She also reviews poetry books for Eyewear (a blogzine of poetry, politics and popular culture) and the Poetry Book Society. She can be contacted by email at samj1811@fastmail.fm
Three
You stand behind me, she’s in front,
your arm loops round to take her hand;
I’m circled in a netherworld,
stranded between the two of you.
You pull her close, *darling, we must email*,
Campari eyes skip straight to her,
you don’t see me, I’m all see-through,
incredible how you’ve phantomised me –
I could be a ship you’re sinking on,
you’d stay on board, adjust your feet,
act as if the ground stayed flat, and all the while
we’re breast on breast,
collapsed into the other’s coat,
giving as new lovers do,
soft and squashing,
into to eachother.
You pull her closer, *we’ll do dinner*,
now her hip bone’s over mine,
bolt of hard in our wool snug,
as if we kiss with teeth colliding,
but only we can hear
our bones are talking.
Netball cupboard
Rows of balls, like heads in a theatre.
A fierce smell of tightly blown rubber.
Dirty light from a window, high above.
The snout of his silver whistle
dangling forward.
New-builds
In square windows side by side in rows,
commuters, home from work, kick off heels, take off ties;
they sit, stand and pace the measured space.
Against the glass, thick with double-glazing,
slatted blinds, the same, hang in strips of show-home white;
still set to open, fading light stripes through.
Sofas, never moved, float a darker shade of brown
onto a sea of beige that coats the floor of every room:
fitted kitchens sparkle under spotlights.
Across the car park, at the station, trains pass by.
A clock, cased in plastic, ticks:
large hands quiver with the seconds,
each beat shudders
in confinement.