Natalie Shaw Surreal-Absurd Sampler
To write a poem is to accept an invitation to a place where everything is possible. There are no edges. I say it; then there it is, right there on the page. Poems are where I go to make things as I would have them, to shape and place them as I choose. I am a tiny despot and my poems are my queendoms, full of palaces and trees just as I choose. They are magical boxes, or very intricate paper pop-ups, or entire carved worlds waiting to be tipped out of a hollowed-out bean. Each one has its own logic and necessariness. - Natalie Shaw
ICE HOUSE LOVE
He rather liked the ice house
No, he was already a little in love
with the ice house
No, even before they had been properly introduced
No, or even met
Ah my frozen lake
all 300 tonnes! -
Ah its stately melt
Ah
[Unlike that other ice]
This Ice is clean
Six inches thick and remarkably clean
Remarkably clean
[homegrown ice is not so clean]
Import duty set arbitrarily high
The ice men came
The old ice money
[He was not concerned with that]
[The ice carts up and down the streets]
Remarkably clean
(First published in The London Magazine)
PIG IN SPACE
ur so alone out here
maybe it's all in ur head
BE VERY AFRAID!!!!
if u were mad how wud u kno
like u wud have a clue
I can't hear u no one can
cry all u like
are u trying to call me?
lol
POACHED TROUT
Little fish
Delicious fish
delicious fish
how I love you little fish
How you shine
in my palm
happy fish
you can’t breathe
happy fish
There in the dark
a flicker
SELF-PORTRAIT AS PINK GRAPEFRUIT SEGMENT
Aha it me
Take up your serrated spoon
Cast off this kidskin pith
(Am vegan tho)
I am so fucking complicated
How to describe my endocarp
My juicy vesicles
My interfering furanocoumarins?
Bergamottin this.
GINGERBREAD HOUSE
Everything in the icehouse
can be eaten
Girl: (licks bricks)
- - - -
Girl: Ah my tongue
(there’s no answer
in the icehouse)
Girl: Mum I’m made
Of ice now mum
I think I’m
an ice girl
(no one is listening
in the icehouse)
( no one )
Girl: (through the ice)
Girl: (says nothing)
Through the pink bricks
Girl: (thinks) That witchy woman!
Hundreds of bricks
And a ladder down
It is terrible, terrible
PARTY INVITATION WITH KNIFE
The invite read
Things'd be better
If you were dead.
Disagree? Come
To my knife fight.
It'll be fun
For me.
WALK IN THE PARK
There’s a bear over there say hello I’d like to
Hey human yes bear how much bear
is possible once, at a picnic enough
is enough little girl how much bear
being eaten a real possibility too much
oh over there tiny fallings what we all saw
a talking bear there on the screen why
aren’t you blue hello sky what can you see
from the sky how much bear not enough
we have to keep eating or not
BUFF CROW
Crow is drinking milk
And exercising.
Late at night
Crow measures
Herself
From wing
To wing.
Not enough
Not enough!
(Note: “Pig in Space,” “Poached Trout,” “Self portrait,” “Gingerbread House,” “Party Invitation with Knife,” “Walk in the Park” are all from Dirty Martini. “Poached Trout” was first published in Tentacular. “Gingerbread House” in Magma.)
Natalie Shaw has been described as 'wonderfully bananas' by the TLS. Her pamphlet Dirty Martini was published by Broken Sleep in January 2023; Oh be quiet came out with Against the Grain in 2020.
