Excerpts from a previously unpublished sequence of poems named The Year of the Pin-Up Calendar.
February
there is a white pigeon opened like a book
on the kerb poor it could not imagine
the unexpected glamour of being a pin-up –
process of violence. carcass like fleecelined
glove turned insideout like redweed in sea
foam it is the second dead animal in a week,
before it was ladybird the colour of tired blood
(dark especially orange) against classic carpet
in noncommittal blue and spotting another
one crawling on the sill I realised it a room
infested with bloodspots going about
their daily selves as if there were nothing
more natural or better to do than distract me
—-when I’m trying to grasp phenomenology
May
‘being in love is losing the ability to spell’ he says
onely half joking I coud make some pithy
comment on modern words and their ioned out
shapes but over the channel France has just
killed off the circumflex. later when even
my skin smells of smoke I sate on the bed
and he the floor and I asked him how he was he
—-looked at me like a dog. why did you put
—-your hand on my knee when you told me
you were going to bed and did you feel
the stubble from where I shaved in the dark
this morning sitting writing this my earrings
lie on the sheets like adjacent bodies where
I had not even noticed I took them out
July
this month is a man standing in our tiny kitchen
—-a study in proportion praise be for men,
for their bodies like ocean liners and desperate
need for a haircut and the ear piercings they’ll
regret in middle age. even the blister ladybirds
are male. standing eating by the stove they lower
their heads to the bowls and make no sound.
the light streams in through the window and barely
gets around them this is summ[a/e]ry work.
praise for their backs like ski slopes out of season,
the surprise of their warmth and delicate hands.
music swells. praise for tall buildings; for how
they hold women like bruised fruit, the tenderness
in their voices when asking me for a light
September
beacon without moth the pin-up for
this month could be the cover photo for
the whole year fact: the moth turns to ash
when crushed under the heel, the ladybirds
are scabs now loving him is coming un
done but still in all the wrong ways fact:
the morning before last I woke with him
kissing my best friend and unbuttoning
his shirt with both hands on the dream
side of my retinas more than picture it is
like a gif like blackandwhite but colour-
photocopied, somehow blue – a window –
his shirt replaying the image is a stinging but
does well that thing of making me like alive
Imogen Cassels is from Sheffield, and is currently reading English at Cambridge. In 2015 she was a Young Poet on the Underground, and in 2016 was a winner of the Poetry Business New Poets Prize. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Blackbox Manifold, Ambit, The Interpreter’s House, and The North.