TOM WATTS f. 1978, bor i London, virker som lærer. Har blant annet gitt ut en chapbook, The Scavengers of London, og vært publisert i diverse engelske magasiner som Equilibrium, Remark, Plus- Que-Parfait, Streetcake og Department.

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Pull and Dredge Diving for chipped ice, tending toour exit wounds with rum; long sucking sounds against the pop of your nipples. I will kiss the hull of your belly, the Belfast shipyard that causes us to flounder, to capsize white-up in the breakers of the afternoon. I will meet you drinking, there will be breakages and there will be singing. My baggy-knee’d woollen trousers do not endure the rain; most storms they shrink a little, wither upunder my knees. I will make an umbrella of my courage, opened up to the anchor’s drift, the pull and dredge of the seabed. Under all the water in the world, hefting tin, effortless, beneath the soddeninebriation of an afternoon’s drinking, the small naked hope of the morning, suspended in brine hung in vinegar and gin,underneath the ribs of impulse – “there will be alcohol | there will be alcohol | will there be alcohol?” Apologise to the itch in my liver for me, the ache in my kidneys. Under the Thames, my head pressed by the weight ofwater, the elephantinecathedral of burden, hums.

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