It is an immense pleasure to present this month’s guest poet Sarah Mnatzaganian. Poems from her award-winning pamphlet Lemonade in the Armenian Quarter were featured here before. Today’s poems were chosen from the dozen that were included in Slow Movement, an exquisite small journal designed, created and stitched by poet Maria Isakova Bennett. The photo of the cover doesn’t quite do it justice.

The sequence was one of four winners in the 2022/2023 Coast to Coast to Coast poetry prize. Maria wrote ‘Slow Movement is a sensuous sequence of love poems expressed through the colours, sounds, materials, and obsessions of cello making and sailing.’ The sequence is dedicated to Robin, the cello maker; poems were previously published (Poetry Wales, Magma, Poetry Salzburg).

Bogle

Two wedges of maple are ready for the vice.
The cello maker scans the silken surfaces for flaws
but the wood looks clean as buttermilk.

He leans and pushes translucent ribbons,
tissue paper thin, through the plane’s grey mouth.
Stops. A failed twig-hole, a dark finger of incipient rot

points from the joint accusingly. He groans,
grabs a back-arch template, offers it to the knot.
Smiles. He’ll outwit the bogle this time.

He heats hide-glue in the pot and rubs the joint
until it gels and bites, the halves aligned and left to dry.
Next week, he’ll flip the plate like a stranded tortoise

and hunt the blemish with his keenest gouge
until he holds a hollow brindled shell,
bogle-ridden wood chips snapping at his feet.

Laying up

Salt-bitten snap shackles slump down the forestay
and surrender to the pull of his thumbs.
He drags an impossibility of canvas over the guard rail
while I hug the rest free of the wire.

The sail crumples like a giant wedding dress,
crocodile-toothed with zigzag thread. It’s time
to climb down to the queasy buoyancy of the old
polystyrene pontoon, to stand fifteen feet from him

and guess where in this pale tangle of cloth to grip
with my left hand; how far to reach with my right.
We’ll tighten the white distances between us
and fold each crease over into a taut edge

until we make a concertina of the sail. He’ll nod
and fold his end towards me, two foot at a time.
I’ll do the same for him until our halves meet
and lie without stretch or slack,

my luff to his leech, head to his foot,
clew to his tack, throat to his peak.

Bridge

He’s in the kitchen, leaning over the hob,
dropping a bridge blank into the frying pan.

I start to speak but know he can’t reply.
He’s counting down the seconds till it’s time to flip

the steaming bridge, to press and count again.
Twenty, twenty, ten, ten, five, five. Done.

He stands the bridge to cool. Takes the next.
I’ll kiss him then, to pass annealing time.

Twenty to please my tongue and lips. Twenty
more to tighten breasts and scalp. Ten, ten

to spice my skin. His free fingers stroke a slow
five, five around my willing ear.