A Sarra Culleno Poetry Feature : poems, writings

CLIMBERS


They're
almost at
the mountain's summit,
high enough to take in the vista,
survey the whole world as if it was Theirs
alone to see. But it occurs to Man One, that The 
Other man was dragged up. The Other Man slowed Them
down with repeated breaks and selfish pit-stops, just when
keeping momentum was important. The Other Man jabs a smarting
jibe now, something about being a *great team*, even though age is not
on Their side anymore. A reminder designed to crush morale even at this brave
juncture. The safety chain of climbers is both harness and hindrance in equal bonds. 
They are not yet at the top, and Man One of the Team wonders if he can haul The Other Man
up, in the name of Squad goals. Then wonders again, what's the point? Even up there, The Other
Man will blot out his horizons.

Dam Busting

This reservoir is fit to burst its banks.
   	The water bends, seeks out, wants to reach you.

      		Its only hope, rare-breaching cutoff walls
         			as there's no Emergency Action Plan 

           			 or conduit pipes to channel the flush
              			 away from the fallout of flood victims.

           		 You won’t remove flash boards, to let it through.
        		 Your freeboards are too low, with surface high 

       	there is no drawdown. With each barrier 
   I take a new course. One farther from you

Fun-Pacing

That book you love, it will forever bookmark midway. 
Each passage, batters throbbing eyeballs, lost in aching blurs.
It’s limp yoga floors you kitten-faint. 

It’s a nature walk too bracing for one foot in front of the other
 – brings on 
a solitary winter no one else feels, 

reserving a personalised tooth-chatter to shiver through alone.
It’s freeze is a sorry weight, your shackle to the blanket’s underside.
Fatigue is a new playground, where pendulum swings

polarise judgement, mood, reflex. It’s dullarding the drunks 
disembarking its dizzy roundabout.
It’s cookie bakes end as dough, 

when thigh muscles buckle, 
and your lurching centre sways 
heavy, and your time’s up, 
leaving it’s unpaced-for mess.
You can’t clear it away.

Night Nursing

At last, the room is powder-puff heavy with small breaths, beating rhythms. Lightly, she
slips between duty’s bars, to escape space, breaking out through the balcony side-door
where clocks stop and time moves differently.

The dark is sharp and she bares her winded chest, to endure cold-thrill punctures of sky.
Each star, a Supreme entomologist spearing bright blinking needles, which pin her
like a willing moth – what am I to Them?

A contactless contract. A magnitudinous mission. This, in the touchless pact 
of rays on retina. Light strobes arranged to perfect, Divine Morse-code, synchronised 
to those small breaths, millennia after celestial deaths, 
linking Them to her,
then, to now, to more

inside, cold, elsewhere, 
soft, outside, light, void, 
heat, sound, dark, sharp, here

at once aligned, her black sky above is also all colours.

SHUT UP

Error 404.
Shut down.
Invitation
to a shut door.

Talk heals. Speech seals
sores and rebonds.
But deaf and dumb
unbinds and blinds.

This mouth: square pegs.
Those ears: round holes.

"What's wrong?"s
and other such
empty welcomes,
when echoes stunt

communion.
No mistaking
Talk To The Hand.
No reunion.

Manspreading

That voice is big.

It buries us.

Lion road rage 
winds down windows 
to roar at mice.

Thread chat 
trolls chant 
#MakeMeASandwich 
Bitch

Fathers’ rows wake children, 

thus supress mindful mothers.

Taking over spaces, 
spreads loudly, 
the rubble over us.

THE ONE THAT NEVER WAS

Time, space, resources, turn our backs. You, we can’t endorse.
But anguished sting of poisonous remorse, through veins course.
A third of you sleeps in my core, pitted, unbegun.
A third of you a coiled gift, still-curled, spiral unsprung.
Ceaseless woundings, unreleased, for one that never was.

Har jayeh donyuh keh berram, 
vasseh batcheham tang misheh delam.
 
Pheromones, God’s design to drive mothers wild because
at one day old, twelve months, ten years, when all time withdraws,
a third of you a lightbulb, unlit, unscrewed, unhung,
always carried with me, the one that never was.
 
Har jayeh donyuh keh berram, 
vasseh batcheham tang misheh delam.

Your fingernails which never formed, but now move with force
upwards through my intestines, ribcage, following course.
In dreams, my chimera, my sweet-cheeked, cherished loved one
smells of tenderness, warmth and custard creams. I’m undone.
Your fist clamps my heart, clinch relentless, gripping till pause
on every hour, skipping beats for one that never was.


Wolfpack Contributor: Sarra Culleno

A Poetry Showcase from Sarra Culleno

A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Sarra Culleno



Bio: Sarra Culleno is a British BAME poet, mother and English teacher who performs her writing at
events across the UK. She writes about children’s rights, motherhood, identity, gender, age,
technology, the environment, politics, modern monogamy and education. Sarra is widely
published. She has written fiction and poetry for publication, performance, print, audiodramas,
podcasts and radio. Sarra was longlisted for the Cinnamon Press Pamphlet Prize, for Nightingale
and Sparrow’s Full Collections 2020, and nominated for Best of the Net 2020 by iambapoet.
Sarra co-hosts Write Out Loud at Waterside Arts, and performs as guest and featured poet at
numerous literary festivals.
Youtube.com/user/sarra1978 – YouTube
@sarracullenopoetry – Instagram
@sarra1978 – Twitter
Sarra1978@hotmail.com – Email
facebook.com/sarracullenopoetry – FaceBook