Helen Bowell

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Lobster

Here’s one from near the end:
barman cooking with no music on
no wine no candles and the knives are blunt
so he slips and nips himself chopping onion
fuck!     I told him the most dangerous 
item in the kitchen is a blunt knife but 
I sit on the sofa           not letting the news in 
the TV offering Gardener’s World     The Chase     Friends
and I know that statistically 
right now someone’s watching 
Rachel get off the plane
I want to ask what they’d do in her nice shoes
it’s just not a good look to stunt your career 
for some jealous guy who lied about divorcing you
dated his student         called another your name 
at the altar            maybe that one’s okay             still  
and the barman who’s done none of these things
is fumbling with the onions    his finger gushing 
and something clunks to the floor 
fuck!    fucking            fuck!
and I think about the knife-sharpener that’s in the drawer
and I think about the robots listening to us
and answering Bradley Walsh’s question about Edvard Munch
The Scream I say out loud        The Scream

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HELEN BOWELL is London-based poet and producer. She is a co-founder of Dead [Women] Poets Society, and an alumna of The Writing Squad, the London Writers Awards and the Roundhouse Poetry Collective. She won a Bronze Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2020.