Embrace Me II
I’m not good enough good enough
are you good enough
for sex in a dream?
it happened last night
and there was bright red jelly
I wasn’t going to tell you
as the image is just mine, but
small, moulded, bright red jellies
the shape of peppers
with the stalk sliced off
it’s a thrill to write quickly
and it’s good to keep in mind
bodies are wet tissues
plus air, some bones, some puke
sometimes what I’d love
is to put an end to poems
I also need a cough drop
and to climb steep hills with you
we might get out of breath
but we’ll wear our nicest clothes
my orange wool-mix coat
with the brown buckle belt
your raw silk off-white blouse
and wide leg trousers
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2019. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2019 was Roseanne Watt.
Editor’s note:
I love the way Tessa Berring’s poetry ignites in the white space of the page; her lines are like flints, her images create sparks when struck together. I really enjoyed the playful and unexpected turns this poem takes from the start; from self-doubt to food-fetish dreams to hill-walking in your fanciest attire. ‘Embrace Me II’ is one of many witty, lyrical and philosophical offerings from Berring’s collection Bitten Hair, but it was the wry, irresistible stanza of ‘sometimes what I’d love / is to put an end to poems’ that clinched my decision for its inclusion here.
Author’s note:
I enjoy using language as a means to trace and mark out thought processes, especially how thought has to skate around the multiple dimensions of the self in it’s ‘working out’ of personal narrative. There’s the undisclosed subconscious self, the sticky material self-as-a-body, and the self as it navigates relationship (both loving and political) with others. ‘Embrace Me II’ is, I think, a skating around the longing to hold all these ‘selves’ in connection, as hard as that can be, (not good enough!) and with as much humour/blunt disquiet as possible.
