New | Poetry | Anushka Bidani

Unfettered, Michael Moreth 

on knowing

someone asked what it was like knowing you,
and I hemmed and hawed for a while  and ended 
up saying - nice! Because I did not have the 
words then   (I still don't, really).

But if I had asked myself what it was like 
knowing you,                                     I would 
probably have said: like knowing a cloud.  
some days it rains and you feel equipped to say 
i know you, when   the answer should really be 
i know what it feels like to be touched by you. 

how to hold a knife 

to slice an apple into perfect, even slices. step i: cut through the centre. step ii: carve the core. step iii: place your thumb on the separation between the plastic and the blade and chop. chop, chop, chop. strike gently along each new border you draw, until you’ve flattened the earth alive. 

my mum has been trying to teach me how to hold a knife since i learned what a knife does. she says, all the pieces should always look the same. she says, one should not be able to recognize which slice came from the edges and which split from the core. i cut imperfectly. i carve perfect circles into messy halves. inevitably, jagged ruins burst from my knife. 

i say, everything falls apart once you bring it to your mouth. 

everything, falls apart.

Therapeutically, Michael Moreth

she’s leaving home 

nothing’s touched me as gently as the rain.

water soaking my shoes, droplets cascading down

my bare wrists i never flinch away from the rain 

but only what follows: adults descending upon us 

like the hungry maw of the sun wiping all the evidence

away. i welcome joy / every august evening, i commit

the same crime. i beg my way into the car with my parents

and i promise them that tonight, i won’t run away 

with the rain. 

i lie.

nothing’s loved me as brutally as a game of lawn-tennis in the pouring rain if love means to be shivering on a cement floor with bloodied knees at 8pm on a Thursday evening. after the match, all my criminal friends and i sit cross-legged on the wet ground awaiting judgement from the adults. puddles bite at my blue socks, cold winds nip my nose red. i lay down, hands under my head, ankles moon-cuffed to my racket. 

it keeps raining. 

it keeps raining. 

it keeps raining,

and we know nothing of death. 

Shazam, Michael Moreth

intoxication 

sweet-summer night, i stumble barefoot to my dorm-room window & smoke. wet face breaking through the warm wind; i wish it didn’t take so much to keep the earth spinning.