Louise Machen is a Mancunian poet and a graduate of The Centre for New Writing at The University of Manchester. Her poetry likes to explore the complicated relationships between people and the world. Her work has most recently appeared in Dreich, Acropolis Journal, and Sound and Vision – an Anthology from Black Bough Poetry. She has an upcoming collaborative pamphlet, The Words of Others are All We Have (2024), with Hedgehog Press. You can find her eating Belgian waffles on Friday nights or, alternatively, on Twitter @LouLouMach.

***

The playground

All that remains is a wall. 
Witness to coarse language we’d kick  
around on summer afternoons: 
pretending to know what we’d said, 
pretending we knew who we were.

I lean into a vague familiarity 
encroached upon by housing I don’t recognize, 
weeds growing in memories of worn hopscotch: 
how we’d spend our after-schools  
drinking Tizer, playing truth or dare, 
adults desperate to tell us unimportant things. 

Clouds part purposefully leaving  
truths in their trails — 
the revelation of who we are when faced  
with swings lacking seats. 
The dare is in the living despite  
what we’ve been left with, or without. 

Eyes closed; I sink between gaps in the brick — 
trying to forget where I came from. 

***

Damsonflies

I have gone out alone,  
hunting for ‘damsonflies’,  
blue like the jam I stirred  
into rice pudding when I was eight:  
chipped tooth and home-cut fringe.  

The day you leant over the canal edge  
they were resting on the reeds,  
an iridescent eye  
on you  
as you picked the fern  
mum still grows in her garden.  

Flying in tandem  
you’d say how they got their blue:  
Babylonian indigo plants,  
Middle Eastern fairies,  
lapis lazuli paintbrushes  
and a reckless dragonfly falling  
into a pool of goblin blood.  

I’d pretend to forget,  
you’d tell me again.  
I can still feel the sugar on my teeth  
from the sarsaparilla tablets we’d share.  

Coming back,  
I watch her sleep, eyes half open,  
as if she doesn’t want to miss a thing,  
as if she’s waiting  
for ‘damsonflies’. 

***

Pebbles and bricks

I am light in your hands 
though I felt heavy to other men. 
I have been made smooth  
by way you move me around 
the palm of your hand 
and the freedom of your water’s edge. 
Put me in your pocket, 
take me home and I will be  
the keepsake on your fireplace. 
You will fathom mysteries 
in the maze of veins that colors  
my undulations 
uncovering the splendor  
just beneath the surface as you 
stroke your thumb across  
my subtle imperfections 
time and again. 
I am light in your hands 
because this is how you feel me 
and that’s the difference  
between a pebble and a brick. 

***

Publishing credits

The playground: Exclusive to East Ridge Review
Damsonflies: First published in Agenda Poetry
Pebbles and Bricks: First published in Dreich