Barbican Young Poets 2019-20

                        for a year after it

happened / I did nothing / but walk his

street / became a body devoted to the

god of holding / a night between the

teeth / myself from the inside out / on

my birthday I became as untouchable

as any royal thing / a well-dressed

spectre / a silk-spun spine / knocked on

every door / only to find a new year

behind each one / falling to its knees /

when nobody was looking I stopped to

consider / the first deer to develop

antlers / the lesson that taught it what

they were for / whether the doe

weeped for already knowing / I think

the difference between analogy and

metaphor / is how long it takes you to

get back on your feet / eventually I had

to pick each shard from the skin / build

myself back to origin / what broke

here? / some frosted glass throat / a

careful lyric / when I followed myself

back home / only to find the building

burning as any place does / when

entered / without permission / know I

did not flinch / just stepped over the

door / off its hinges / and kept walking