Georgia Brisco
Four Poems from Fingertips and Ammonnite:
the city, the frogs, the worm and gyroscope
this city it fizzes and pops like the cool of my drink if you sit and listen very quietly here in this silent room
like a million tiny cities
liquid and rushing and effortlessly moving underneath my fingers under the aluminium cold and damp against my palm
a thousand pavements still and bright and simmering
breathless with stories
— the city
he is on a desert island sanded and wind-duned
in the middle of an ocean wet with silence
loud with foam
and he dreams of a mother he never had
and a childhood memory
a film he shouldn’t have been allowed to watch
of croaking frogs in a bath no a puddle of blood
was that it?
he can’t remember
so he looks at the forward because the backwards churns too much
but the forward is filled with
sick like the type
thick
that the frogs swam in drowned died in
was that it?
he can’t remember — the frogs
the concrete is hot dry
the grit tart
against the soft belly flesh
stop!
the little girl’s toes pause
just in time
hand tugged sticky fingers
reach for the body
save it save it save it
put it back into the cool grass where its belly won’t burn and shoes aren’t as many
and dirt sweet cold warm dark dirt
is home
— the worm
consider
the planets
hair falls
upside down
past two ears pink seashells
consider the atoms too blood swirls to the cheeks consider your feet held tight to this round of rock and turn around and around until your stomach
is galaxies dizzy
and still
and still.
— gyroscope
Georgia Brisco is a South African writer whose work explores identity, trauma and healing, the chosen family, and liminal spaces. She was once in a British TV series and a bad German movie before realising she wanted to write characters instead. Georgia received the UCT Short Fiction Prize and headed a literacy programme before writing for award-winning social campaigns, including Project 84, which drove policy around suicide prevention. She is currently finishing her MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford and, when she isn't regretfully getting involved in a comments-section debate, working on her first novel. Her work has appeared in Non-Stalgia andSTAAR. Georgia believes joyful stories should exist for everyone. You can find her at georgiabrisco.com/ or @georgiabrisco