Tag: borders and intimacy

Jerry Gordon – Closures

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Jerry Gordon responds to Jamie Osborn’s borders and intimacy prompt. To get your work featured submit responses to any of the writing exercises from the first series here.

Closures

I closed roads
to cars leading
into my heart
and have found
more space for
couples to stroll
and kids to mark
the streets with
chalk birds and lions. 
The number of
people whispering
secrets has also increased
three-fold, but that may be 
from more people meeting 
without needing to not
pause. 
I may begin closing
my heart’s skies
to plane traffic, just
because I’d like to 
hear the sun’s motors
whirring again.

Jenny Pagdin – Regrets

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Jenny Pagdin

This week Jenny Pagdin talks about the inexpressible in poetry and her experiences of post-natal psychosis which she explores in her pamphlet Caldbeck.
Here she responds to the poetry prompt set by Jamie Osborn in the first episode to write a poem on borders and intimacy. Please submit your own response to this and other prompts on the podcast here.

Regrets

When I crossed your border
I ought to have held
your language – tactile and direct – on my
unwieldy tongue.

and when I edged
onto your landlocked patch
I should have offered you something for your integrity.

And those nights you lay drifting, permeable,
I ought to have carried you through the crowd of voices
like an untuned radio in the dark.

Jenny Pagdin