OPEN HOUSES, Tom McLaughlin

Description

‘What I found utterly compelling about this debut pamphlet was its mastery of forms that relax the poems into their clear view of a disturbing domesticity. This ease of style against the struggles to extricate the queer voice into newly found spaces shows how Tom McLaughlin is a poet of major importance.’ Daljit Nagra

Read the poem ‘The Occupant’ from the collection below:

I lived for a year among artefacts:

her collection of headscarves;

her darkroom equipment; in a drawer

of her desk a notebook filled with sketches.

I read her books with their underlined phrases:

two tiny question marks over an English colloquialism.

The sofa-bed sagged in the middle

in the shape of two cleaving bodies.

 

There were copies, under the bed, of her book.

Voices floated through the skylight as I read

how a man had forced his way into her home.

 

When the boiler leaked, her books were damaged.

I laid them out on the floor like drowned birds.