A knock-off Erling Haaland Manchester City kit
is stretched over his blue dressing gown-style jumper
like the Cookie Monster has been forced to watch
a football team he knows nothing about
by his father-in-law. His hands are two packets
of blueberries. His legs are blue raspberry ice pops.
His eyes are oceans, or something less poorly described.
I think about his veins when I’m bored, the way they
sit high under his skin, his blood desperate for me
to see it, to tell me not to go to work tomorrow
and to sit with him on our humpback whale sofa
and practice taking penalties in the living room.

Carl Burkitt 2024

Football. Food. Fork. No. No. No.
Fudge bar. Flat. Fart. No. No. No.
Fone. Foto. Feasant. No. No. No.
Fumb. Finking. Free. No. No. No.
Face. Freckles. Feelings. Falling
into a future of fear and fun and
failure and fantasy and fear and
fuck ups and fairies and fear and
flight and fear and fight and fear
and fear and fear and frog. Yep.

Carl Burkitt 2024

The sound of a 17-year-old struggling
to navigate a roll cage of cheese and squeeze
through ASDA aisles stuffed with New Year’s Eve
shoppers is enough to send me back in time.
I stacked ham, sausages, turkeys on shelves
like dead baubles on a butcher’s Christmas tree.
I wasn’t old enough to drink but my breath stank
of Dooley’s most Sunday mornings, my lips dripped
with in-jokes made with other teenagers
dressed in a blue and orange uniform
who didn’t care, but we did
in our bones, enjoy understanding the importance
of stock rotation, the responsibility of holding
a reduction gun, the chance to use heavy machinery,
seeing teachers in their weekend clothes,
being respected by the parents of friends,
being a part of a gang that fed the town.

Carl Burkitt 2023

What do angry mice send at Christmas?
Cross mouse cards,
according to the Christmas cracker joke.
And while the little strip of paper
makes no one around the table laugh
it also doesn’t get across the importance
of those frustrated mice reaching out
to family and friends during times of conflict,
making the effort to tease a future of resolution,
reminding them of softer, fluffier times,
and how tricky it must’ve been to do all that
with such little paws.

Carl Burkitt 2023

He’s on the sofa,
straight-backed with a chest built
from exercise and soft drinks,
a paper Christmas cracker hat on his head.
He realises he forgot to tell us
his wife is pregnant, but we could tell
he’s preparing to become a father, to age,
to get ready to be one of two people
in a house who needs to have all the answers
to stuff he ultimately doesn’t care about
when he asked his weekend’s host,
Can you overcook a chutney?

Carl Burkitt 2023

trotting
in
trainers
new
or
plopping
in a
stranger’s
loo
it’s up
to you
which is
true

Carl Burkitt 2023

A temporary Rudolph tattoo is flying
on your wrist. It came in your Christmas stocking
with others shaped like presents and gingerbread
people and a wreath you don’t quite care about.
Rudolph is zooming around the room
unaware anyone is helping him move.
You’re quick to run these days. You turn
years into minutes with some kind of magic dust.
You make it impossible to breathe,
in a good way,
like a reindeer hurtling through space
with a mouthful of carrot and mince pie.

Carl Burkitt 2023

They flapped, the Robins,
but a Christmas Day in the nest
will always take its toll.

Carl Burkitt 2023

Ally McCoist is trying to gather his thoughts
after Jeff Stelling’s Christmas dinner bombshell.
They’re bantering and calling each other
PG-friendly insults. It’s a bit of fun.
A talkSPORT emailer asks the question:
No gravy? What’s the point in Christmas?
Jeff speaks of being surrounded by faces
you’ve watch grow over the years, a cracker
hat nestled neatly on the crown of his head,
the touch of his wife’s hand as they drift
off on the sofa for the countless year in a row.
Ally McCoist rereads the email out loud
and agrees with the listener that no gravy
on your Christmas dinner is the calling card
of a future serial killer.

Carl Burkitt 2023

Whatever it is
it’ll be no good for your throat,
especially if it was tinsel. Imagine it
tangled around your tonsils
on Christmas morning. Stopping you
from saying kind things to ears
you want in your house, eating a knuckle
of blue cheese with raspberry jam,
swallowing your homemade mulled wine
with the final After Eight Mint
and the sinking sensation that Christmas
is often no more than the press
of a pause button.

Carl Burkitt 2023