Pleasure Yourself Whilst I Watch – Wendy Allen

Pleasure Yourself Whilst I Watch

It is the way you don’t buy my favourite chocolate anymore,
it is on the list of specified items, but you say it is out of stock –
that it must be Brexit, or the fact we are over.
That night, we eat milk chocolate, and it is the purple of the wrapper
which makes me taste copper circled resentment when
I think about the red wrapping of our first night.
In bed, I look at your eyes fucking me, I break into six squares,
and I want to say you forgot my chocolate bar,
you forgot my chocolate bar,
but you are too busy in your own orgasm to notice.

Wendy Allen is studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes. Her first pamphlet was published as a Legitimate Snack by Broken Sleep and her poems published in Northern Gravy, Dear reader, and Poetry Wales (Winter 2021)

You Wear a T Shirt with the National Rail Emblem on – Wendy Allen

You Wear a T Shirt with the National Rail Emblem on

From Chester to Bangor
the carriages peer down on top
of the wide-eyed sea wall below

you trace your two fingers slow
down the curve of my waist
to hipbone, to the sea underneath

you go down on me
your slated lips taste of waves
I am between blue and breathing.

Wendy Allen came third in The Cheltenham Poetry Festival Transformation competition 2021. She has a Legitimate Snack coming out with Broken Sleep. She is being mentored by Richard Scott and starts her MA in Creative Writing in September.