LUCY ROSE CUNNINGHAM
Strings 1
‘dreams jangling with lost connections’
March 2024
This comes through the night to you,
winged creature winged worry, everything in flight: who takes care of the circulatory system, desire and digestion, the body of faith; what is its pathology, what does blood flow mean and arterial dams or an amen in my mouth; perennial falling - did I mean to write failing - concern fleshing out my vision field, infinite space between here and not going back.
We think only in terms of letting go, in tabular nights leaden with sirens wailing, retreating to the safety of bedroom by candlelit funicular, our conversations in the dark heavy. Only voice tangible, we let out our feralness, dressed for the descent, for empty altars, grasping for what we are without –
Waking to legs aching, questioning, where have I been running to, in dreams jangling with lost connections; questioning who will plug in the light at autumn, who will press up against my warmth, history, folded skin to be contained/held/understood, the continuity of being a full circle, until something happens, someone happens.
Attention caught; an arrangement of shadows thrown by leaves against a wall and clods of wet earth, alive post-thunderstorm-sun-shower, the colour of my local lore greyscale to murky blues, when mutual enchantment with a friend becomes working out how you much you care (too much, again?) –
Forced to make of oneself, temporary and droppable, holding all the un-connection in. We have been priming for a lack, to say here is where it ends, for now, continuity a circle of starts and stops and starts, gasp obstruction glottal stop, hesitant; falling in, falling out. Interruptive and scattered.
Dispossession, the river run of the place a quickening water flow, knowing this will happen again, and again, our aching song lapping peripheries. One call one keening apart, noting detached time, reaching a spiral of longing / capacity / jerking tolerance, confinement-to-unfathomed-expanse. This comes, felled angel, when I feel through the night.
LUCY ROSE CUNNINGHAM likes winged creatures and red knitwear. Cunningham has written for and exhibited performances at Leeds Art Gallery, South London Gallery, Wysing Arts Centre, and HuMBase, Stuttgart. She is author of poetry pamphlets For Mary; Marie, Maria and Interval: House, Lover, Slippages, both published by Broken Sleep Books, the latter featuring in PN Review 2023. Her writing acted as the score for ‘At First Sight: Late Works X WORMS Magazine’ at ICA, London, October 2022. Cunningham has also written for Glasgow-based presses Pala Press, SPAM and MAP Magazine, and more recently for arts journal L’Essenziale Studio, Milan.
