Chloe Elliott

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Dreamholiday

A blonde bat asks me to kneel
and here I am in                                                     
a tree refusing. Here
he teaches me Japanese by 
a fountain, here we are in 
a vegetarian restaurant peeling 
labels off skunked wine, 
here a blowjob in a steam room, 
here a balcony over a forest 
in Brno, here lemon & sherbet 
& black pepper & mint,
tongues as soft dives, here 
running down a bike trail, here
borrowing his moisturiser, 
burnt wings like the inside of an apricot,
here an entire plate of figs, here 
climbing over a castle gate, 
here naked in a blue pool, here 
hearing him tell the Italian merchant ragazza, 
here the rental car slipping in the rain, 
here the dead pigeon in the woods,
here the body of Wenceslas
scorching on a Romanesque roof,
here the last of us,
the fog that settles in June,
dropping his hand on the escalator,
slowing down into this moment
sweeping round to the steep oak
up to the mezzanine 
as Sigur Rós croons you sigh low, 
pouring into a bed
low to the ground as we pluck
lemons off the 
wallpaper.

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CHLOE ELLIOTT is a poet based in the North. She is a winner of the 2022 New Poets Prize as well as the 2020 Creative Future Writers’ Award. Her pamphlet encyclopaedia is forthcoming with Smith|Doorstop in June 2023.