Three Poems by Edward Cottrell

Radishes

Stop thinking about your death and begin
              forgetting you have
slept dreaming a delicate expanse to wake
              whacking against.

Until something or other is revealed, scratch
              At these                            , failing that –
get back on the bottle: This time tomorrow, this time
              tomorrow, this time – .

I think we should just give up now, don’t you?
              I am a visitor                            here,
what advice would you give to such a visitor                            here?
              There there? There there?



Pocket Calculator

The numbers are wrong on this old calculator,
inside it thinks less and less
and the answers never, held upside down, forbid me to age.

It has worn yellow pinstripes underneath
the blind fading displays, out
of character, as a museum curator pocketing wet stones

from a fountain. The sky is falling, always
it will land on its feet.
One day the dogs will fall and we shall drown, which is just how we like it.



Steel Dog

Checker-veined leaves, green and red
great with sharp cuts,
the bloody
fingers biting down a sheared can.
Steel dog, I can hear the sea
dawning on my reluctance
from a tin-ear maraca,
home made & just now, married.
Let us huddle in the mess.