Poetry by Melissa Mann

Nothing

 

 

 

There is nothing between them

They’re wearing skin

They’re wearing air

They’re wearing a dream

Wearing a nightmare

They’re wearing each other

They’re wearing nothing

There is nothing between them

A nothing that’s the start of everything

Or the start of the end

Between them nothing but

Everything and the end

He’s on top of her

Shooting rubber bands at her heart

Shooting lies at her heart

Single white male lies

She lies beneath him

Looting silence from the dark

The silence of thoughts

Thoughts she shapes with her hands

In his flesh

Like warm, wet clay

Thoughts she cannot say

About this thing between them

This something

This everything

This nothing

She stares at the ceiling

At the shadows that tell her

She’s not there

Where her me should be

There’s nothing

He comes

He goes

She can feel the endlessness of him

In the lean of the mattress

She can feel him smiling

She can feel him lying

There

She can feel him wearing her

Out

She can feel him wearing himself

Wearing nothing

But himself

Whereas she

She’s wearing him

Holding his hand

Prints on her body

Holding his body

In her empty hands

Trying to hold onto his

Endlessness

Trying to hold onto this

Something

This everything

Before it becomes nothing

Before it becomes

The nothing between them

 

 

 

 

Follow the Christ

 

 

 

She is sorry to bother me,

He knows I must be busy.

 

I’m still in my robe, print of the pillow case

On my ‘morning-after-the-night-before’ face.

 

They stand in the porch wearing their Sunday best,

With copies of Watchtower pressed to their chests,

 

Like children trying to be seen and not heard,

Asking if they might interest me in God’s word

 

To oppose the Devil and gain everlasting life.

They hand me a leaflet headed ‘Follow the Christ!’

 

Saying it’s my own personal invitation

To next week’s Jehovah’s Witnesses’ convention,

 

Which includes a six-act bible drama of the Sermon on the Mount,

With a cast of characters in full-costume too numerous to count.

 

In the picture: Jesus, lean and toned with a ‘beach holiday in Eilat’ tan.

Eyes twinkling, he mouths, “if you loved me you’d make me a real man.”

 

“Is this true, that Jesus loves me passionately?”

I point at the leaflet.  They nod, “oh yes, absolutely!”

 

“Well lucky me cos this JC’s a stud muffin all right.

Think he’d be up for shagging my brains out one night?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I write contemporary fiction and poetry and have also carried out and published research into creativity in literature.  Some of the poems from my first poetry collection Pink Knitted Love/Hate Mittens currently feature in an online chapbook at Open Wide Magazine.  I have had stories published at Dogmatika, the Laura Hird Showcase, Savage Manners, The Beat and Gold Dust.  Four stories from my anthology The A to FF of London and Other Journeys were short-listed for The Asham Award (2003 and 2007), the London Arts New Writing Competition and The Harpers & Queen/Orange Prize for Fiction Short Story Competition.  I took part in the London Lit Plus Festival 2007.  To read more of my work or to listen to the Melissanory Podcast Series, visit my website at www.melissamann.com