Neil Douglas worked as a GP and Community Paediatrician in London’s East End. His poetry has appeared in magazines and anthologies in the UK, North America and Hong Kong. ‘Rosie’, ‘Kafka’s uncle’, and ‘Neuro-developmental clinic’ were all commended in the Hippocrates Prize 2022. ‘I palpitates with Joy’ appeared in bath magg issue 10, 2022 and ‘Mud’ in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award Anthology 2022. His work was also shortlisted for the Bridport Prize for Poetry (2021) and Flash Fiction (2022).

Rosie

I arrive out of good will
two days before Christmas.
On the doorstep trip over screw-capped
wine bottles, ignore a cracked pane,
slip the latch; follow your voice   

along a dim-lit passage,
your terrier, Brody, nuzzling my crotch
with his eager wet nose as I perch
on the edge of a stained sofa
in this room where the living is done.  

Set within easy reach,
the holy trinity: glass, codeine, lighter.
For my benefit the Benson&Hedges
hidden behind cushions supporting
your bad back, their existence betrayed 

by a yellow smog we inhale, exhale,
like trees breathing traffic on East Ferry Road.
I study your face—a dried riverbed,
but for your eyes’ flood of sadness, carrying
your life downstream in its old leather suitcase. 

His photograph, framed in gilt, stills
the tremor in your nicotine fingers.
You never really liked him (nobody liked him),
just loved him beyond reason
with fierce language of bitten tongue, cut lip. 

I write your prescription long hand.
Brody is up on the sofa, in my ear.
He tells me, she is broken,
demands the impossible of this doctor
 —she is broken, mend her. Make her good.

Kafka’s uncle

Every time I visit, she takes my left hand,
pulls my knuckles into her lips.
Doctor, you’re like a son to me, she says.
The son I never had.
(The daughters long flown, bar one)
But you don’t have a wedding band.
My arm blushes, naked below the elbow.
Never mind. Some day.  

High on her orthopaedic bed,
as her companion brews Earl Grey,
plates slices of lemon drizzle,
she tells me again that her great grandmother
always kissed the hand of her doctor.
Kafka’s uncle, she says.

Neuro-developmental clinic 

Yesterday I met a boy with holes
In places where the boy should be  

                      Between spaces where the boy should be
                      His mother confided there is cheese 

His mother told me he is Swiss cheese
That’s no diagnosis I thought aloud  

                     No diagnosis he echoed out loud
                     So I brought him close to the window  

As if the light behind him in the window
Could unlock this puzzle, slip the catch 

                      His mind unlocked, he slipped the catch
                      I didn’t sense the danger in his eyes 

He jumped before he looked me in the eyes
Yesterday I met a boy with holes

I palpitates with joy*

I palpitates with joy.
I precipitates into puddlesome.  

I swims into dark blue horizontals
as I conjures your white rabbitness, 

inhales your buttered toastedness.
I sinks in the warmity of your breath.  

I jingles my merriments in songthrush.
Your proclivity toward tangerines,  

that float-squeaky polystyreneness,
your certainty of tangents 

from which in zeal with truth-or-dare
I calculates the logarithmic arc 

of your traffic-light lollipopitude
while I denies not the turmeric possibility 

to gain fingernail purchase
on the precipice ledger of your love. 

*(the title taken from a letter written by artist Fransesc d’Assis Gali to artist Ithell Colquhoun)

Mud

You are in the back garden digging a hole in the mud with a red plastic spade. Cold, windy, you are wearing a Balaclava helmet because granny says you have sensitive ears and you believe; believe, in your heart of hearts you will find the bones of dead pirates or Roman coins belonging to the Emperor Trajan. Your sister will come. Come and eat the mud. You will shout out that she is eating mud and someone will come. Someone will come and she will be taken to the kitchen, taken to have her mouth washed out. And the cat will watch her mouth washed out. And you will watch the cat watching her mouth washed out. You will hear the water pounding on metal, the spitting, the grit on stainless steel, the voice saying not to do that. Don’t ever do that again. The next day and the day after your sister eats mud and you will watch the cat watching, water pounding. The cat will yawn. But you, you will never eat the mud or find the bones of dead pirates or Roman coins belonging to the Emperor Trajan and your sister will eventually stop eating mud and instead teach English Literature to posh girls in Palmers Green.