A taste of you slipped into me
like moonlight in a locked church.
The flesh at first left me cold:
respectful fingers, diffident lips
spilling awkward mumbles in
The Angel’s fug. We hunted down
politeness with iced vodka
and flew outside, where the night
took your tongue and gave it to mine,
igniting a flame that swallowed
Soho’s oxygen whole to shape
the way I kissed you back:
adoration of seventeen again,
ablaze with the lost conviction
that this can be a state of grace,
this immaculate need to fuck in the street.
~ Janet Lees
Janet Lees graduated with distinction from the Creative Writing MA at Lancaster University last year. One of 55 Commonwealth poets to feature in the BBC Radio ‘Poetry Postcards’ project, she has been published in magazines including Magma Poetry and Poetry News and was recently anthologised via the Lightship International Literary prize. Janet’s video poems have been selected for the Aesthetica Art Prize and several international poetry film festivals.