Mari Lavelle-Hill
i want to take a picture of every empty chair in Denmark
why / in a CPNHGN art gallery / a curated family of chairs face the wall / eager puppies / waiting on their padded haunches / they should make pregnancy test adverts w/ people looking relieved / to see how loss can sit / in the stomach like an empty chair / pulled out from a laid table / everything is happening in the wrong order / arc longing / back on itself like a moon / in a dream my stage name is mild mouse / i perform a timid striptease on zoom / one toe pointed / on the seat of a spotlit chair / left leg bent at a right angle / eyes to the sky / slowly plucking out my whiskers / apologising / as each floats to the floor / everyone turns their cameras off / stage lights dim / i want to honour you by being bolder / turn the chairs around! / bring everyone in! / let them watch you enter a room w/ perfect ease! sit down & we’ll wait / let grief moonlight / a path across the room / to the seated joy it is / to have known you
MARI LAVELLE-HILL is a graduate of the Literature and Creative Writing Undergraduate and the Poetry Masters at the University of East Anglia. She now lives, works and writes in London. Her debut chapbook, Cetacean as Several (2020), was published by Salò Press.