Tess Jolly

SWEETMEATS

Now the anxieties have crossed the threshold and become our anxieties, abdomens gently pulsing, we measure angelica and silver balls onto dishes orbiting the candelabra. Flamelight flickers benevolently over everything, showcasing yeasty bodies through the frills of our cake-case dresses, the wrists we bind with strawberry laces for the anxieties to nibble through. The intermittent fizzing of wings in wax is the sound of our achievements, now all that’s holding us down is baking beans. Packing our needs into vacuums, saving the air, we decorate our fingers with crystallised eternity rings, engrave words like trespass, covet, replicate, host into the shining clusters while our minds spin on their pivots, lacing the skirting boards with sugar. Though the doors are locked and we’re only renting, the afternoons bestow us with streaming flakes which catch on the anxieties’ coats. Most days we wake with them curled on our hearts clicking delectable mouthparts, and the thought of glazing gold leaf onto bespoke tongues becoming unbearable. On the edge of town the mirrorfields are filled with circus tents then emptied, and at regular intervals spring shoves through the earth her fistfuls of quivering flowers.

MY DARLING FIXATION –

your ventriloquist skills would have me believe
it’s only the storm telling me to bend my body like this,

winter branches trilling the strings; your expert rhetoric
feeds me crumbs from the palm of one hand

while the other dangles me over the brink
in your favourite arena of ruins and heather

and silver skin formed in the perfect storm of my dreams
like nylon pulled from the interface –

but the moon is a glass eye fished up in a net
of misgivings, the sandpiper bobs up and down

betraying your presence, plucking invertebrates
out of the mud: my benchmark, my weakness,

my darling fixation, aroused by forging the flourish
of my latest signature tic you have me practise

over and over the trick of not flinching
when the wind opens its mouth and spits flies.

FLIGHT

Touch-startler
sprung-trigger

delicate structure caught in nets of light

gold-flicker
nerve-whisker

everywhere shitter screeching for mother bones

like toothpicks
slotted together

belly bloated with bottle-tops and string

tangleskulledandthought
enrapturedbeak

peck pecking the walls stubborn little

flight-fearer
cage-builder

can’t you see the window is open

feel the breeze
blowing in from the river

carrying the scent of marsh hibiscus and berry

the promise
of seeds and meat?

MILK

Our ghostlings rise
behind the pews
fumbling with their straws
and the golden plugs of cream,
the fatty globules floating
like lucid dreams
with cooling skins
they hold up to the light,
day by day perfecting
their shamrocks
and their hearts,
that nifty trick
by which they twist
their cataracts
through the glass,
the constant stream of stars,
the faded stream that finds
them on their knees
lapping quietly from bowls
with our birth names
hand-painted on –
which brings to mind
that bovine reek,
the cheery men at dawn.

Tess Jolly has published two pamphlets: Touchpapers (Eyewear) and Thus the Blue Hour Comes (Indigo Dreams). Her first full collection, Breakfast at the Origami Café, is forthcoming from Blue Diode Press.