Two Poems by Jessica Mookherjee

In His Fashion…

Remember those sleepless nights when I still wore all that make-up,
when we walked hand in hand down those moon roads, drunk,
never sure which one of us was the exile, which one of us would get old
first? I called you names, didn’t I? Columbine, Mystery Face, Lunachick,
Crying Girl, Maha. Have you heard the latest gossip about me now?
I imagine you turning over cards. I made you my moon goddess,
perhaps you really are. You said, grow a backbone, buy a decent car,
get a job in a shop, and I shouldn’t have turned you saint or that wicked
voice inside my head which is writing to you now. Those games
you had me play, to name all your cracks and crevices, your Seas
of Misery, and I stayed in the Sea of Vapour where you stationed me.
We had some good times, didn’t we? Remember the glowworms we ate?
You lit up the sky and I couldn’t keep up. Anyway, I’m OK these days,
but if you are answering prayers from your hot tub far away – throw me
a star dressed as a cat’s eye and I will write you a pantomime in return.
You called me white-boy I remember, foolish one and chased those
cool-bad boys, turned our myths into an ambulance. I should never
have looked up to you, raggedy tart, all dolled up. I can see you now, still
pining for him with his Armani and silk shirts; me, still that dickhead
in a clown-suit. I was the idiot, I’m sorry I ever thought you were the moon.

Brave

It does not feel like brave, it’s not
a big wide thing of the Hollywood films:
flick of cigarette, slung leather jacket,
gun capers or even that bit in The Revenant
when Leonardo DiCaprio, in tense
desperation to hold on to the Oscar,
wrestles the bear; no, it doesn’t feel
like that; it’s more like the bear I met
that autumn, halfway up Whistler Mountain,
when the snow was thin, too few berries
that summer and not enough time to sleep.
The bear looked at me in her coat
of drizzle, much as a person slumped
in a doorway of a busy street would look
at me. Stuck in this valley of endurance,
just living, each day: it feels more like that.

Jessica Mookherjee is a widely published poet. She has twice been highly commended in the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem and her work is included in notable anthologies such as Staying Human (Bloodaxe). She is the author of two full collections, and her second Tigress (Nine Arches Press), was shortlisted for best second collection in the Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize. Her latest pamphlet is Playlists (Broken Sleep Books) and she has her third collection, Notes from a Shipwreck, has just been published by Nine Arches Press. She is a co-editor of Against the Grain Press.