Ellen McAteer is General Manager of Poetry London and founder of Tell It Slant poetry bookshop in Glasgow. Her poetry pamphlet ’Honesty Mirror’, published by Red Squirrel Press, won the last New Writer magazine competition. She has been mentored by Rachel Long and Alexander Hutchison.

Her work has previously been published in Poetry London, The North, Aesthetica, Gutter Magazine, and in the anthologies, One for the Road, Tip Tap Flat, and A Bird is Not A Stone (translations), among others. She has performed at Poetry in Aldeburgh and completed a commission for Stanza Poetry Festival.

Email: ellenmcateer@hotmail.com, Twitter: @ellenmcateer, Insta: @ellenmcateerpoet

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Drouth

Meaning thirst, as in for knowledge:

dusty books on flyspecked shelves –

a painting you can’t quite make out,

whose colours seem to bury grins.

Meaning thirst as in for the bevvy:

an emollient poured, shushing, soft –

my thirst is not dry but wet, like a

rain-slicked road under bald tyres.

Meaning thirst as in longing for
a music felt in the bones, bright
laughing noise, mouths and minds
connecting like hands in a cat’s cradle.

Thirst that abandons and haunts you

as if you are a house, flickering light

moving from window to window,

magic lantern eyes, flashing, dying.

_____

My Mother as Snake

Her hair cropped
cancer close and
moulting. Her face
white translucence
of empty scales –
clear and puckered.
Bare feet shucked
cold, blue, devoid
of blood. Only her
eyes still bright
as she wriggles
the skin of life
almost off her.