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Embrace Me II

Tessa Berring

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 


Tessa Berring

From Bitten Hair (Blue Diode Press, 2019)

Reproduced by permission of the poet.

Tags:

dreams sexuality the body

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.

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Best Scottish Poems 2019: English

edited by Roseanne Watt
Find out more

Tessa Berring

Tessa Berring is an artist and writer based in Edinburgh.
More about Tessa Berring

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