I’m delighted to say that my poem, ‘Dancing Animal’, has recently been published in Swim Press‘ issue O6: Desire. You can purchase issue 06 directly from Swim Press‘ shop. Thank you again to Swim Press for accepting this piece.

Read the poem in full below.

Dancing Animal

After Kurt Vonnegut*

I want to wake up and decide to get up and do something.
I want to go walk down the street to buy flowers. 
I want to feel the heat on the way, sense the pavement sweating beneath my sandals, 
see the sun striking cars on the road.
I want to hear someone’s radio as I cross their home’s open windows 
and catch a glimpse of their taste, their life—
I want the trees to lend me their shade and pattern my shoulders 
and the birds to sing and catch their insects.
I want it to be a Saturday, or maybe a Sunday so I can hear the churches, 
so it can feel like we’re all moving towards something fresh.
I want to stop by a shop window and linger on the trinkets— 
see a girl buy a new blue bracelet.
I want there to be a busker I can tip, I’ll take any instrument,
and I want there to be a lightness in the air—
I want the cashier to smile when I hand over my cheap red tulips
and say they’re my mum’s favourite too, good choice. 
I want an 80s rock anthem to play on the speakers
and for someone to be humming down the vegetable aisle. 
I want the light to be energising, pouring through the automatic doors 
as I re-enter the street, as the wind offers a sudden whoosh
that makes a dad and his son giggle, and a teenager clutch her bag.
I want to find myself stopping beneath pink magnolia trees
or at the sight of a bright orange ladybird—
I want to idle, to dawdle, to wend and to amble—
I want the phones and emails to be quiet
just for the day, just long enough to remember 
I am a dancing animal.

*In 2005, Kurt Vonnegut was interviewed by David Brancaccio for PBS’s NOW show. He said the following about a conversation with his wife, in which he told her he was going to buy an envelope:

‘She says, ‘Well, you’re not a poor man. Why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?’ And so I pretend not to hear her and go out to get an envelope; because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

Well, I meet a lot of people; and uh… see some great looking babes; and a fire engine goes by and I give them the ‘thumbs up’. And ask a woman what kind of dog that is… And, I don’t know… The moral of the story is, we’re here on Earth to fart around.

And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize – or they don’t care – is we’re dancing animals. You know; we love to move around. And we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.’