of virtues stacked upon adverbs & my salty swings
of deflation & envy & ineptness in the professionalism
of my friends who are sober & industrious even when they are obvious not
so obvious their networking is forgivable for this reason & reasons can be found
anywhere all the more endearing back aching from Viennese *burdens*
bite hard between the eyes when cling film our art rolled out
over breakfast & recognition from origins with a big raping
o open
up u
FLAT 2
broken daisies
beneath
the square rug
sofa and vodka
the yellow arm-
pitted singlet
emerges from the
lawn armchair
gunk
dripping from the djembe
upended and used
as an ash tray
once probably
what else
could it be but a resin
from tobacco says Andy.
*
Andy speaks of
the table tennis table
made of MDF
which when
left in the rain last
summer began to warp
and now sits
in my bike shed.
Sophia and I open
it up to see if the
armchair from Flat
2 can be stored there
for safe-keeping. it
can’t. the unlocked
one at the end can
so Sophia
rolls it
over the lawn
to there
it recorded
by Paige on her
i-Phone
Snap-chatted to
us sitting together
later on
the rug.
*
the two of them
Sophia and Paige
from Flat 3
eat Indian: one on
the armchair the other
on the rug. both
wearing dressing gowns:
ketchup and mustard they
are and call
themselves these things
which become only now
on the late week evening
just before it breaks into
a humid rain.
*
dirty is a word
littered and then
repeated: picked
up with a
grubby Friday hand
then breathed out.
Andy is seeing
more of Paige
across the hall
and Sophia above
me: we’ve been
dancing around
that one for a while.
*
we coo once more
for Andy from Flat 4
and he comes down
to see if he can
break into
Flat 2. that’s all
we want to do
is break into
each other’s rooms
and see how we move
around them
Zoe Kingsley is a Melbourne-born writer and poet living in the UK. She is associate editor of The Suburban Review. Her poetry can be found at Cosmonauts Avenue, The Bohemyth and The Suburban Review. A collaboration with 'the kid' was recently published in Textual Practice. She sometimes tweets @quinnsleyz.