Alice Murray is a London-based poet who graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2020. Alice approaches real relationships through surreal angles in her writing, exploring themes of family, womanhood, love, and the doppelgänger. Her work has been published in Ink Sweat & Tears.
Twitter: @murrayalice7
Insta: @alidmurray
Email: murrayalice7@gmail.com
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which reminds me of that time I swapped my mattress with hers
while she was out
sprinkling ant powder
in our drive.
It was so easy.
I shimmied off one mattress.
I shimmied on the next.
When asked, I said it happened
for the hell of it.
And that night her nightmare was mine,
the same dream
where a daddy long legs comes
to steal her arms.
I came round to her, beside me.
She was stroking my downy hair.
I woke in the best sweat of her life.
_____
Child of Spleen
There are some things the matter with her:
Mouths. She has too many.
Her birthmarks reek
of purple daughterhood.
She’s got cling-film-skin,
a rumbling heart, unfed.
The eldest child of one. `
Open wide, says mum,
Here comes the aeroplane!
Mum hops in a cockpit,
prepares to be consumed
but the many mouths of the child shut.
There’s no room in her.
There’s no room out of her either.
_____
Leopards and Dandelions
So when Nanna passes me
a book of her poems
it’s the title that I take in first:
Leopards and Dandelions.
A delicate association
of wild cats and blooms.
It’s a curious thing
to be given.
It makes me wonder
if she slipped medicinal love of words
into the sugar lumps
I’d shovel up my cheeks
when I could still hide
with a child’s face.
Maybe she snuck
a regard for the pun
in the folded fivers
she thought I could afford
a trip to The Pictures with,
the ones she’d sprout
with trickery from her purse.
Maybe it was those arms.
At the point of embrace.
When I’d press against her hard
with my putty chest
waiting to feel the fierce within her roar
and hail me in a thousand sweet florets.
Then I’d know
I’d inherited all her kingdoms.
She always did call me her treasure.
_____