erin malley poetry archive

she/her

[erinmalleyreal]

i write poems. a lot of which contain some pretty heavy subject matter so

TW FOR: gore, violence, death, sexualisation, transphobia, gender dysphoria, references/allusions to suicide and assault.

my name isnt erin

im transfem

buy my old college's poetry collections (i see no money from this btw)

[erinmalleyreal]

messy

these are some pretty shit screenshots, but tumblr fucks up the formatting so bad that i have to post it this way.

raw text (unformatted) under cut:

she can’t not put it into words.

she can’t tap her foot against the floorboards,

scrape it in an open arc and begin to gyrate her

hips like a horny bird;

or lather her ink across a canvas 

waiting for it to dry, waiting for someone to

stumble upon it at a car-boot sale years later

once the meaning had dissolved into colour

and the feelings that she had chased blended

into little, black, stick-men. who watched silently

as her ivory fingers stumbled across the ivory keyboard

that some mother or father paid for her to keep out of sight.

she can’t put it into song.

she can’t whet her throat with a coherent

rhythm or –god forbid– metre, beholden 

to a

metronome’s tick. 120. 130. 96. 250. bpm.

as she falls back in her chair with a dull

thud escaping her lips, and a sigh that

leaks from the seat below

with the curtains closed and

the audience gone and

the tickets sold with a price that rings of

failure, all those with good taste left before act 3

and all those without didn’t bother to show.

their warbled, garbled voices pushed out from

the doors and windows, shattering glass

across the floor

and she’s the one who has to

clear the mess

clear her mess

the empty drinks and the spilled

that stained the carpet, trampled in

so tight, she almost saw her face

reflected in each battered kernel.

she can’t not put it into words

but they can’t

come out quite right, no matter

how many times she insists

or begs or listens,

no-one seems to bat an eye, so it must be the

words, right? it can only be the words,

it can only be the ink she

chokes out painlessly,

the mess she scrawls on the wall

that she doesn’t bother with intermission for

that she howls out in the night like a pained wolf, right?

It has to be the words.

But the words are all she has.

[erinmalleyreal]

Shoesmith

I remember,

last week,

we were out walking.

Lovely day.

It was the autumn,

and you wanted to show me the trees.

Point out

each dent in every

leaf, each little change in hue,

how they

seemed to

congregate by the bases of each

great oak.

And, as

we were walking I

noticed a

small little something nudging up

against my foot within my shoe.

A small rock.

Wedged between my pinkie toe

and whatever the one to the left of it was called.

It wasn't a

smooth rock either. or a

pebble- it was sharp. Cutting into me

and my sock,

from a pair which you

kindly gifted to me on my birthday.

After about ten

steps, I had

had enough of the pushing and stabbing and cutting and squeezing

and elected to tip the stone out

of my shoe myself.

So I

stopped

and

bent

and shook the poor

shoe silly, hopin g

, n ay , waiting f o r the stone

to f a l l

but it

never did.

I beat

the shoe

against my hand but

no stone!

I put

it back on to join you, but

there was still

a sharp pain

that rattled against my foot.

[erinmalleyreal]

retuning

1, 2, 3, spin, 4

the string pulls taut .

Gradually shifting

into something new.

Like a whisper,

a pout, a blackbird.

I turn the machine head

once again, and the knot

at the base of the balloon tightens.

The twine is pulled further;

tension builds. If I am to

pluck the line, it will snap

clean in two. I will be down to

five strings.

It reaches boiling point.

The frog stares up at me.

From a high E, to a C#.

And for a moment, I am

relieved. I am happy. I am here.

I am present. In the moment.

I am me

the string snaps off. hanging on by the edges.

trapped under a knot. in its little burrow

and i dont know what to do. i have no spare strings

ive bought thr wine bottle spent the pounds and the mileage back home but in the end i corked it.

i tuned it too far.

and in the mirror my eyes feel different

[erinmalleyreal]

Fishing

My mother doesn’t eat fish.

Which is odd because, as my grandfather tells me (and he tells me a lot), she used to love fish when she was a girl.

You see, 

my mother came from a long line of fisherman, my grandfather would take her out to the pier every sunday and she would catch some cod or trout that they would cut up and eat for dinner.

But she just stopped. At around 16, after she had gone out by herself one day.

And has never eaten a salmon since. Not even the ones my father takes home to us, she just has the chips.

And so, curious, I took my tackle and my bucket and my fishing rod and set out to the pier.

After about an hour of nothing, I saw her. Laying against the rock, looking to be as cold as the air.

She swam over, just as topless as before, and rested her head on the back of her hands. Her voice was beautiful.

Peeling off each layer until we were equally underdressed,  she lured me in under the water.

I had never been so happy to have swam and to have been so cold. Because she was oh so very warm.

I don’t eat fish anymore.

Which is odd because I used to  love fish when I was a girl.

[erinmalleyreal]

you deserved a long and happy life

its a pretty view

A shrouded, sheathed glow. Distant lights– cold, disheartened. Spectres of rain littered in the air, pooling into a sea of vast ink, deep and warm,

its hand reaches upwards to meet hers. Their fingers slipping together for- who knows how long. They don’t notice it. That brief interim,

standing on both legs to teeter, x marking the spot, as you can imagine. Thousands of voices confusing pallor mortis for clown makeup. Distant lights– growing closer,

running up to meet her;  wishing to catch up over a nice coffee, they haven’t seen each other for who knows how long. She stares up at the cloudy sky.

Proud of her skill, to reach a certain point, she points a finger and fixes a swaying line into endless black, the horizon’s peak, black and huge.

long way down

[erinmalleyreal]

The State of Affairs

Mirrors are unilaterally terrifying. They stare back like voiceless pits into the depths of ourselves, yet only show exterior factors. And always, always the worst ones.

And yet I find myself, as I often do time and time again, staring into that glossy blank screen. Eyes greyish and dulled, a bored knife to be sharpened with play.

There are cracks in this one, though. Marking it, twisting it, making it ‘unique’ (though it already was) making it trustworthy, as my face is split into thousands of tiny shards

each sliver of fading light baring a different expression. One maw rests lazily open to catch flies, another scowls at a third’s uneven smile, and the last I cannot bare to look at.

I shift it from the wall, forcing it to swim between each of my fingers til’ it escapes, biting me in return. A drop of red paint on a porcelain canvas. Easily ignorable, in favour of the sharp, black spot in place of the unwitting blade.

Within it, I see the vastness, the blank slate. A central guiding pillar, heart-shaped and endless. I reach out, almost by second nature, and

it towers before you. Deep and dark as night, darker than that, blacker than that.

It pulses in rainbow hue, hexcodes shifting from one to another in soft, water-like gradients. The state of affairs is this titanic wreck of barnacles and discarded dreams. You do not flinch when addressed.

And her smile, which seemed to defeat everything, shined on in front of you,  and for a moment, it was as if all the darkness had been blown away. As if in imitation, your soul began to glow.

[erinmalleyreal]

A short horror story

When my grandfather died, he left me the house.

It wasn’t much– littered with unpaid bills and mold galore,  cramped, flat, and humid– more of a shoebox, than a house, really.

But it was mine. And much more than what my cousins could say they inherited. (Some old papers here and there,  scraps of faded dialogues to be forgotten in a week.)

When the key was first handed to me by faceless, shadow-suited lawmen, I felt bemused. I had no need for a house, and definitely no use for the debts that accompanied it.

Yet, I gave in: wandered from each cardboard edge, descended past the shell-ish floorboards, pushed aside the hanging halloween ghosts and  abandoned spider’s webs (with bankrupt estate agents’ flags on 

their lawns), pressed my hand up to the cream-coloured wallpaper, broke through it into the evening, and found her; Singing quietly, softly, as imperceptibly as a needle falling.

The cage, branded in gold insignia, was old and dusty and locked tight. Hidden behind a veil of thin gaps and bars, I must stress, reader, I was not the one to entrap her. I found her, pristine and thin, perched in its dead centre.

I don’t know how she survived for so long without my grandfather to feed her, but she had. And without a single scratch to her sharp, emerald and ruby feathers.

I retreated fairly quickly, back through the door, depriving her of her deserved light once again, searching for a key of any kind. Instead, I returned with laurel leaves,

carefully feeding them through the bars of her cage. She ate eagerly and tried, desperately, to nudge up against my fingers, yet, they couldn’t fit through the gilded veneer in which she belonged. I couldn’t crack it open without risking clipping her wings.

Time, 

as it always does,  continued in its steady pace towards entropy, dragging its feet haphazardly forward; link by unsteady link, yard by lovefilled yard.

One day, she got close to finding my hand. I wedged a slice of skin through the cage’s bars. Her beak tapped lightly against it. Her eyes, small pinpricks of black, peered up at me.

She was begging for help. She thought I could let her out. She wanted out. She wanted out. She wanted out. She wanted me.

And my mind wandered, cruelly, if I should give her the reprieve. A cat. In a box. Poison to its side. Losing air. A bird. In a cage. Lover to its side. Losing air.

Who’s to say she wouldn’t fly away the minute she could? Who’s to say that every nudge and kiss and song was for me?

She was a sun god, her wings were made to reach the heat, she wouldn’t fall. She would thrive. Who’s to say that I wasn’t a star to her?

Who’s to say I wasn’t the one who caged her?

The bird died. They always do. She left me her heart on a silver platter.

[erinmalleyreal]

The Hilt of Calesvol

I am no knight. I am no knave.

I am but a wanderer, hidden ‘neath the longstanding grass, tall and broad- sharpened to a single point

as if poised towards the heart of a villain, as if pointed towards the heads of the vain.

It takes and takes and struggles under foot, each step I choke wrings its life further so I stick to the well-trodden,

regretting I ever stepped on weeds. These paths, these souls who came before,

force my gaze forward, keep my pace steady. Town to town, I meander, watching the wind pick up at every respite until the wicked within

is quelled by my hand, resting on the hilt of Calesvol, and the white flowers bloom again. They, all together,

bunch and gather in my palms. A small gesture but,  I hope, enough for you, dear knight.

She speaks to me with chaste tongue, “My Lady,” she says in reverence, “you are too kind.”

As if I had handed her my bare heart. She had swapped her fealty for her king for my disgrace, and I hers.

This girl, this knight of the grail,

trembles slightly as I smile back. Her sword, a pinprick of a blade, swift and deadly, hides from view.

My own blade shudders outward, poised to her heart. “Percival,” I reply, turning her face to mine,

“You are all too deserving of such a kindness.” And another evil was felled by my hand, as hers rested on the hilt of Calesvol.

[erinmalleyreal]

I write love poems.

I write love poems. That's what I do. I wake up in the morning, pick

a number of lines per stanza, draft up a new myth of womanhood, and suddenly I've got 16 bars of erotica.

I pick the same woman every time, though she keeps from me. She has stolen my head and my heart.

And she keeps dying.

Last week, she drank too much, this week it was a tumor, next week will be an arrow to the forehead

(so she tells me).

She rests, and wakes, and tells me of the other side. Of the vast and the unknowable and the tight grip it seems to have over the mind in the early hours

of the morn.

Of celebrities, and dogs, and pets, and husbands, and children, and children, and yet more children who I managed to outmaneuver.

Her seed has planted in the back of my mind. Her trap, her all-encompassing prison. A panopticon of which I am found in every cell.

So, I write my letters, begging, clawing for escape, slipping in bribes to the guards.

Yet all they do is point  at the fishtails in my ‘f's and compliment me on the prose.

Because this is what I'm good at. It's all I can do. I write love poems.

I wrote this one just for you.

[erinmalleyreal]

There Will Come Soft Pains

There will come soft pains, in the withering night, when the once-fed cats roam the streets with fright.

When bluebirds and pigeons, all with their flack, rest weary nests on our empty tarmac.

When rats and voles dig up their holes, and spiders in the garden with octuple eyes behold the voiceless air beside them.

The fences, blown and torn from dirt, stricken through the neighbourhood, never know just who they hurt when no one calls the stray dogs “good”.

Cockroaches and beetles, ladybirds and bees, worms and other maggots, will no longer be at peace.

The wolves will all be crying, The cows will be there too, the world will be united in their mourning over you.

The trees will stop their blooming, the snow will never fall, Lady Spring will never wake, she can't bear to leave her bed at all.

Our empty seat at the dinner table, our quiet conversations lost, the world will feel the same soft pains, when humanity is all but frost.

[erinmalleyreal]

tumblr formatting fucks up the my stanza structures

better than allpoetry (no coloured text)

[erinmalleyreal]

short story about my pronoun pin

Met God the other day. She was tired, just a few years older than me, and was waiting for the seven-twenty-four to Waterloo at the train station.

She was a Ravenclaw, I remember that. She had it on her shirt: blue shield, hiding poorly behind a bird (which looked more like an eagle) with

the word “RAVENCLAW” written underneath in bold letters. She was kind; saw me shivering from the downpour and passed over her cup of

Starbucks-branded hot chocolate, sleeveless and with some name scrawled on the cardboard rim– something beginning with J. I can’t recall what.

Anyway, I hate the stuff, it’s always too bitter and watery for me, but I still drank anyway (she insisted I do, refusing to take the cup back.)

She asked what I was doing. I said I was waiting for the train. She laughed, it was loud and warm like a fireplace at Christmas, with grandma and grandad

sat behind me on the sofa, eagerly watching me tear apart my present wrapping like a starved tomcat scratching up the living room furniture.

She said she was going into London to visit her friend in the hospital; she (her friend) had just given birth, y’see, and she wanted to visit the

“little babe”, northern drawl wringing out each vowel like the dregs of water from a bathroom towel. I took another sip of hot chocolate. Eugh.

I asked if it was a girl. She said it was a boy, her smile fading slightly; then was quick to assure me there was “nothing wrong with that.”

The train came soon after,  and, when I asked if she wanted her hot chocolate back, she grimaced. She was staring at the left breast of my shirt.

[erinmalleyreal]

And the Lady who knew Nothing.

She came silently, borne back wistful while I searched from the pier for this lady, with dull, sunken eyes; who claimed to be so ignorant, that she was blind to the ground she walked upon. I laughed,

yet she only smiled. She always smiled. The lady who knew nothing was the happiest of all the misfortune-laden fellows to walk the tightrope between the waking and the tired. She didn’t think of the world outside, of a 

way to balance herself. No, she put one foot in front of the other and walked, floated soared gently on a breeze like an ill-forgotten quill that slipped from my fingers.

I remember one night, she spoke to me. Grabbed some paper and that pen of hers, and wrote me a letter from across the classroom, office, ballroom, bar, apartment, bedroom. The paper was scrawled in beautiful cursive,

that she had scratched and scraped and gripped and wrenched and heaved and wrought  to perfection. It was a dire letter. It was a hopeful letter. She spoke so sweetly, wrote so softly that our minds wandered; conjured fantasies of  hot-springs and cinemas and new years eve parties.

She called me an angel. A star, a distant, unattainable light that burnt so hot it could melt the very ground she walked upon. I hope she never gets to see me, to see that the face of her angel has acne.

[erinmalleyreal]

fishhook

there’s a man in my home there’s a Man in my home. he’s under the floorboards, picking at the nails and the dustbunnies

he watches my sleep listens to my dreams, gently peels back my eyelids as my throat begins to gently bleed out on to the duvet and pool into the stained carpet.

there’s a man in my home in my home there’s aman

i’m scared to pull back the cover. because i know he;s there. the man in my home is always watching always spying creeping just out of sight and i feel his grip pull and nag like a fishook under my skin there’s a man in my skin and i want him out. there’s a hole in my chest from where ive dug and dug and dug and dug and pulled back and gored and gutted and slung and withered and rotted as slowly my foundations burst and i crumble my wallpaper peeling and my boiler bursting until i cant keep the hot water inside and it begins to flood the toilet and the shower and the bathand the kitchen and the knives circle the drain as i whimper and whine and  keep fucking clawing at the man in my house who refuses to leave.