Saturday Sway
By Gab Godfrey

 

Underneath a thrumming current
a stillness lingers in the stale air
the undulating bodies in the crowd flow in a wave which threatens the floor with a sweeping crest but will never fall.
We are interconnected by the shoving, caressing, and gyrating swells.
Love and distain intermingle in the dank stormy heat of our bodies
and we transmogrify into one Saturday self:
a horrific amalgamation of what it means to be young, alive, and beautiful.

Bodies waste time colliding in a timeless space--
they share the liminality of night under neon.
Cigarette kissed lips breathe half-truths into the shared fog.
Thank God we aren’t the ones throwing up outside –
bodies huddled together in a nauseous approximation of comfort.
The retching forms and breaks bonds with reckless abandon.

The pulsing rhythm amends the wounds of silence
and allows no room for vocalizations or thought.
No room for anger –
Though the couples outside breathing in fire and exhaling smoke
Tend to disagree.

I Wish
I wish I did not have to hold grief in my hands.
If I could sling it,
even briefly,
upon my shoulder
or put it down,
my trembling palms could be used once again.

They could warm.
But now they are always so busy
with the holding:
because the weight is mine,
and it deserves to be held tenderly,
at it has no place else to go.

.

 

Mom

in the vestibule of my mother’s car
she drives too slow in the left lane
and we break the silence
with croaked out confessions.

 

She tells me she hates that the vet was right:
That the new organ which caused a slowness
Would soon result in a screeching halt.
It would insist on the end.
My shattered breath tells her I feel the same.

 

We have this ability
My mother and I,
To communicate with our breath-
The occasional nod.
It must come from being so similar.

 

I say I feel unlovable.
She tells me she thinks everyone feels that way deep down.
I disagree
We lapse into silence again.

.

Ben Macnair from UK lives in Staffordshire. He is a widely published, award-winning poet and playwright, with three produced plays to his name. He works in the Arts field.