Featured Poet: Sarah Cuddon

Welcome to hell reads the black scrawl
on the wall into town. The driver picks up speed,
chased by those departed souls struck down right here.
One bullet cocked to snuff the year.

Sun spills metallic over the hills.
That was where they hid, he says, the snipers,
in those trees, then turns to me, his finger poised;
a pink and glassy scar beneath his ear.

It is Sunday in Sarajevo. We drive on sweaty.
In winter I stood next to that Mosque,
sold puffs of a single cigarette. His English is sharp,
I could make one onion last for a month.

Orange umbrellas jostle in the square where men jut
cool chins over chessboards and a boy squats
with electric keyboard, one hand cupped
towards the passing convoy.

Splashes of red wax streak the pavement,
names etched in asphalt. We call them Sarajevo Roses,
his voice deepens, that’s where they were shot.
I crane to see, the roses are melting, cherry lustre

slipping between cracked paving stones,
seeping along the gaps the way
warm blood flushes to the surface as it moves.

September the kiss it was, our parting kiss
September, I was there, free to go where I wanted
and nothing touched me, only summer’s late heat
hanging around a heart

orbiting at the outer limits of disbelief,
me pedalling wildly on a bicycle through evening
breezes pathetic and heroic with faint blood
painting the road in dashes like morse code,

the unspeakable memories,
the wood pigeon in our silence one day,
the way pausing conversation ricocheted round the lamp
so we turned up the volume to make music bigger than
us.

The way we swam hesitant hands
pushing out against a cold sea,
small voices thirsting to night-dive deep
lit by our own phosphorescence.

Stopped on Waterloo Bridge a woman caught my eyes
and cradled us in hers. Startled I dropped
my gaze to a sickle of sand winking
on the Thames beach where a drunk man

picked his way along river walls to piss
in that place where we twisted limbs hot nights
and later rubbed heads on pillows shut-eyed,
sealed sure in white bed linen.

Wherever I looked, there you were,
memory playing cheap and potent games

and still, the power of your name is lead on my tongue.
It is the bite of the veinte-quatro ant on my neck.
It is some soul when flesh has been cleaved away.