Lisa Kelly’s first collection, A Map Towards Fluency, was published by Carcanet in 2019. Her poems have appeared in Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches Press) and Carcanet’s New Poetries VII. Her pamphlets are Philip Levine’s Good Ear (Stonewood Press) and Bloodhound (Hearing Eye). Her pamphlet, ‘from The IKEA Back Catalogue‘ is forthcoming from New Walk Editions in 2021.
Late Blooms
My neighbour’s hanging basket, why
does it horrify me, yet
each time I pass, I must look
and check for signs of withering.
Is it mismatch of purple
and yellow, which reminds me
of childhood lollies – not Drumsticks
which smelt of raspberry cream –
but those cheap dual-toned blobs of
saliva-d chalk on a stick you
only bought because they would
outlast greed for liquorice,
stamen dabbed in sherbet pollen,
or vanilla sap sucked from
inside ridged chocolate cones
or even bland stuck-together
petals of pastel coloured
rice paper that dissolved on
the tongue – as close as I got to
a communion wafer –
to give an otherworldly
fizz. No, I can’t remember
their name, and for a long time
I thought my neighbour’s flowers
artificial as the lolly’s
ingredients, the way they
managed to outlast weather,
until I noticed under the
basket, from a pavement crack
a purple and yellow bloom.
Lisa Kelly
