Poetry, Emmett Valentine
the first thing most people noticed was that the sky, a pupil of
living marble, began to dilate like a fist unfurling.
gilded seeds long forgotten underground suddenly bloomed and
the clammy hands of real estate agents erupted up through fractured ground,
groping. things got faster, more abstract. crows heave with potential. a pylon starts to crackle. anaphora. anaphora. every frog finds himself in a bucket of hot water
lithe and unflinching - listen, listen, in the streets there is crying oh
god, they are saying, why did nobody tell us the end would be so metaphysical
and tell us so much about the nature of humanity. the fifth horseman
leers as he drives by in a grit lorry to soak up all the light, and
as the darkening ground splits into rivulets and spills into another sea, we peer
cautiously into the abyss – only to find that the stars had been beneath us all along,
glowering. ah, well. language grabs his hat and trips out the back door and
then it is quiet. you and i never noticed a thing. you were looking at two punnets of
strawberries, trying to work out which was the best value for money
and i was looking at you.
Emmett (he/him) is a trans poet living in Scotland. He is bit all over the place poetically but you can find his best stuff on his Instagram @boyscoutiago, where you'll encounter a lot of him queering historical figures and literary concepts, romanticising the mundane, and comparing things to dogs.
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