Poetry by Stephanie Powell

             half alive - soo zzzz CC



​Sweet and low,

there are few things that could be
described as such in this calamitous 
city o’ London- the traffic puts us
to sleep like a mother’s song.

when the river is low it looks as though it
tastes of
battery acid and pirate bone. 
My friend comes to

visit, we weigh almost 33 years
on the grass-
watch a great Dane steal a
pizza box & carry it

across the Heath. She looks magnificent in
early April-
as she describes our twenties as a
miserable, beautiful thing.

So much fucking that we didn’t enjoy.
She sings to me 
later, when it
is dark and we walk to stop the cold.

A soft, climbing register-
the humming song,
performed inward to vibrate down about the 
organs. 

My lungs feel as though on the verge
of being spatchcocked- as
if the past is only sitting at the bottom of our throats-
we force it up, to see if it dies in our mouths.





The dissidents,

​permanently bent over by the wind-
mixed blood by syringe tip
to become family.
One with plenty of missing pieces, teeth-
the outer layers become rich and coarse
like pig skin,
pressed against the join of glass and brick
sleeping in the shop mouth again-
a raft of old fruit boxes-
imagining the body set alight
to keep the heat in.
the embalming flow of drug 
warming through the veins.

​
​

Stephanie Powell is a poet based in London, she grew up in Melbourne, Australia. Her work has appeared in various print and online publications. A new collection of poems, Bone will be published in Summer 2021. When not writing she works in documentary television.

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