making poison

when i was five my brother and i made poison.
we were living in a city then but we probably would have made the poison anyway. we kept it in a paint can under somebody else's house and we put all the poisonous things into it that we could think of: toadstools, dead mice, mountainash berries which may not have been poisonous but looked it, piss which we saved up in order to add to the paint can. by the time the can was full everything in it was very poisonous. the problem was that once having made the poison we couldn't just leave it there. we had to do something with it. we didn't want to put it in anyone's food but we wanted an object, a completion.
there was no one we hated enough, that was the difficulty.
i can't remember what we did with the poison in the end.
did we leave it under the corner of the house which was made of wood and brownish yellow? did we throw it at someone, some innocuous child? we wouldn't have dared an adult. is this a true image i have, a small face streaming with tears and berries, the sudden knowledge that the poison was really poisonous after all? or did we throw it out, do i remember those red berries floating down a gutter, into a culvert, am i innocent?
why did we make the poison in the first place?
i remember the glee with which we stirred and added, the sense of magic and accomplishment. making poison is as much fun as making a cake. people like to make poison. if you don't understand this you will never understand anything.

margaret atwood

babysitting the spirits

it's autumn in july
and i like it.

i dare the tornado to come see me.

yr a needy girl i can tell when i look in yr big brown eyes

dancing with the walls, my friend

secret christmasses at my house,
being curly, being tall.

i dreamt i was throwing balls of light under a curtain in a darkened room.

never tell a lie.
never say a thing that is not true.
when you tell a lie, you are lying.
when you have told a lie, you have lied.
the cat lay on the rug.
it likes lying by the fire.

i know all the dance moves
designed to cause maximum injury

whilst walking inside the city walls,
i saw one hundred identical schoolgirls,
bespectacled and brunette.
they were english but spoke another language that i did not recognize.

i was bewitched
which caused me to drop ice cream on myself.

i had to move to the other side of the train to avoid seeing the a******r

the other day, whilst in town,
i saw a very skinny girl.
i liked her sweatshirt,
the way it hung off her tiny shoulders.
she was a fast walker but
her face had the look of a drowsy rat.
i became more fascinated
when i noticed, in one back pocket,
a refresher chew bar,
in the other,
a hypodermic.
in her mouth, bubble gum, i could smell it.
i followed her
past the police station,
the library,
she turned around slightly and i saw how slowly she blinked.
i left her just beyond the law courts
where she had male friends waiting for her.

i have designs on being a seaside witch

i was sulking in the back seat when i saw the sign by the side of the road;

SHRUBS
VEG
CLIMBERS
EGGS

you need not braid yr hair for me, i have not come a-wooing

i am a businesswoman. i am at the cinema. it's five to four and i am alone. i'm smoking a cigarette and drinking red wine, i've combed my hair and put my lipstick on.
i feel odd but not sore - why?

true love will find you in the end

talking like a bitch
acting like a witch
dealing with the sitch
goes without a hitch

and she grew so big, her belly so round,
that she bought a maternity smock and whilst walking past the ones with narrowed eyes, arched her back and touched her front and instead, bathed in sympathy as she faked her way to the cake shop.

i saw vulpes vulpes flee the rainy krime scene

• so what if there are birds under my hair, do i have to tell you everything?
• umbrella summer
• lapdog rues the day
• here is my door, do not knock on it
• susan cheats

you missed me

lonely