2 poems by tam(sin) blaxter

AN INCANTATION TO MAKE AN EMAIL ARRIVE

​Say you are hot water
running rills of warmth
across my stomach
 
Say this room is earth under a tree
this room is bare, aching earth this
room is my open palms
 
Say you are a tangerine
whose skin
falls away like foil or a winter coat
 
Say I expect nothing of you
I am not waiting ⁠— I’m up to my elbows
​already in tomorrow — I am not waiting ⁠— 

A CHARM TO REPAIR A BROKEN PHONE

​The real trick is to realise that
whatever the fault (glass spidered,
waterlogged circuitry, sniping texts and
friends’ voices slipping to sugary nothing), it resides
 
in you first and foremost. The phone
itself is nothing. The phone itself
is your clenching heart.             In the grey morning
⁠— the sky yellow as  orangejuice
with streetlight light, flu-pallid with dawn⁠ — 

go out into the garden. Dig into

mouthmoist loam. You’ll find
three egg-shaped stones
an arm’s length deep. Place your phone
with them and cover it over. Mark the
spot.
 
Return on whim           one evening in spring
​before its bulb
splits, sprouts.

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Tam(sin) Blaxter is a historical linguist and poet based in Cambridge, UK. Her work has recently appeared in Tears in the Fence, DREGINALD and Pamenar Online Magazine, among other places, and her chapbook after the great death is published with 845 Press. Find her online at www.icge.co.uk and (inconsistently) on Twitter @what_really_no.