Morning-Afters
by and published in Edition Six of Pomegranate
Briefly our baby
grinned up at me
like a looming face-in-a-spoon
under the waxy reflections
of Starbucks’ squeaky clean
floor boards. His face
all large fleshy moon
of dormant futures. All
irony-in-the-eyes, he observed
my clutch of the lone white pill
momentous at the centre
of its foil rectangle,
come to flush him away.
He didn’t judge. He didn’t
even dare me
the slight of hand slip
which would bury it
hidden in the fabric folds
of the sofa’s dark armpit.
Deep down with the coffee crumbs.
The biscuit dregs.
Engulfed later by the nozzle
of an aching waitress
who’d not see
The beginning of life itself.
The white powder point
of two worlds buckling
histories halted and diverted
back-tracked smack into parallel.
Who’d not see our worlds wrenching up
dripping earthward, budding off
a golden drop of anglo-american skin.
Pinning us into forevers
at the centre of the Atlantic.
Rachel Baker
Rachel Baker is 22 years old and studying Maths at Cambridge. She is desperately clinging to poetry to stop the numbers consuming her soul completely.