Eve Esfandiari-Denney

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~ This Is Medium World 7 ~

Myself and then my body are
sipping sequin-coloured Oxy through
a vein on the edge of light.
In my nightgown i levitate
from the Oncology unit
to the nearby bar, Genuine Liquorette.
There, a swan drifts past
behind me at the pace of a funeral
and i ask the bouncer

                 What’s that absolute
classic Ibiza tune; dun dun dundun
you know..
He says:
              Darude, Sandstorm.
And what did i come here for again, oh yeah,
i’m in Medium World 7
feat. the horses from the Lloyds TSB advert
running running! with me along a five-mile
prayer mat towards the smoking area and

                 i can’t keep my mouth closed.
i ask a stranger:
How do you keep your mouth closed?
But we are in Medium World 7,
possession is not like protection there is only
the distance between an amoeba and a lake.

So i’m swaying…
or walking,      bypassing Papa Smurf and
what a mess in me my glass
floods with ice as the sky opens
and the ambulance arrives. A paramedic
takes me by the hand back
into the tubular where
Medium World 7 will stop moving on

            and on its axis.
i was so sad when they folded me back
into the sheets of the portable bed returning
to a room dying could enter.

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Current UEA scholar EVE ESFANDIARI-DENNEY is publishing her debut pamphlet My Bodies This Morning This Evening with Bad Betty Press. Her poems are soon to be featured in The Poetry Review and Prototype’s annual anthology, among others. She was shortlisted for The White Review Poets Prize 2021.