Poem

By Bora Rex

The fall-short, piecemeal filling of a punnet

of orange apricots, each plump like a child's

sunburst knees, jostled and juggled headlong by

the water's thousand hands blasting between them,

then through them, over them, rushing out those four

open mouths in the corners of the plastic,

streams trickling tinny into the kitchen sink,

the punnet never quite filling or emptying,

floating within the zen equilibrium

of a question and answer or, from before,

of a thousand flitting hands, amazes still.

Feel, the tap flicked off, dark flecks of dirt filtered,

rinsed out and away, every apricot stop

still into a sudden cool and the punnet

pull light into the air, finally empty,

dotted with crisp tapwater dew, pulling light,

a kite tied to the flab of your aged wrists,

swelling now in that sweet spell of weightlessness

which used to jolt you when you were little,

the schoolboys showing you—push inwards against

my hands, push push push, tense tense tense, then release

—can you feel the air bubble, plump yet fleeting?

BORA REX reads English at Magdalen College. He makes things with paint, wood, celluloid, and words.

Art by Jemima Swain