Poem of the Month

Doctor E by Olivia Tuck

A private hospital is shatterproof below a plutonium sky. 

Inside, the coffee machine is dormant, as it will be again

* 

and again. (One day, it’ll wake to erupt with cocoa magma –

the spit will taste of Am Ex cards, of air miles.)

*

We shrink in the consulting room, your briefcase eavesdropping,

your eyes those of a donkey who snuffles fallen apples:

*

I am a cellophane fish, shrivelled, in your swivel chair.

You speak to Mummy about youngsters such as me;

*

camouflage the quiver in your throat, as when Titanic’s Captain 

heard Atlantic haemorrhaging through a berg-sliced leer 

*

and softly, deliberately urged his crew:

I think she’s badly damaged.