Poems by Holly Corfield Carr

Unborn Ichthyosaur at Bristol Museum


Gambler’s hand, fat stack
spilling over felt, each smudgy 
token spelling out  s — p —     i        
                                 — n — e — 
and there, behind glass, 
such piercing proximity,  
unbearably similar and
     here, where it all folds, 
it can’t be anything else but 
like mine, this stiff insistence 
of spine anticipating 
        the sudden unstringing 
of beads from my neck where my 
worrying fingers have snapped 
the cord and a private sile 
        applauds the floor and me, 
crouched, cursing, holding the bare 
thread ahead, damp wick 
trailing the line 
        back to my right hand, 
holding still the top bone, 
warm atlas, as if it is 
from here 
        we are all suspended. 
I count back from ten 
on the tiny abacus 
of this spine’s time,
        rethreading the necklace
from memory. I try 
twice more before 
it is a different necklace,
        before I notice the scale 
of the room, her vertebrae 
lengthening in the hallway, 
the scribbled chit of her guts,
        the baby slow asleep,
the slow spun coin 
        of her eye.

​


Fisher

The jetty rolls its sleeves 
and at the tufted shoulder of the sea, 
we are each plucking a hair.  


Been here since dawn, watching 
the line between the Saturday sun 
and the skin draw itself


like a bath draws itself
up to show you the ceiling, 
how your face fills pink and how tired.


We are looking at a crow’s foot 
picking the gore of limpets 
when the lines stiffen.


Under the soft cuff of the waves, 
the estuary clouds, turns inside out 
and the torn muscle 


of an eel, blue vein of an animal, 
snaps up the line, alive! alive! oh!
god! its eyes, lidless


wet eggs under the skin
of the sea looking at us,
pink and wretched 


at what we have made 
appear from behind the picture 
of the morning’s ceiling.  


We hurry to unhook its cheek; 
the sound of slick meat 
is the eel hiding herself 


in the frame as we slap back
up the jetty to take a selfie
looking, too late, afraid.

About the poet

Holly Corfield Carr received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2012 and was the winner of the Frieze Writer’s Prize in 2015. Her writing is published in magazines, artists’ books and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Holly is currently a PhD student at the University of Cambridge where she is researching contemporary site-specific writing practices and sculpture. She is also a 2016/17 Visiting Research Fellow at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds and she has also received support from the Faber New Poets scheme. She spends her time between Bristol and Cambridge.

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