but Nottingham has a café
to wait in when you miss your train
and has a fake fireplace and a freezer
with no ice creams in it
and a broken card payment system
and a pinball machine called Rainbow’s Gold
that is plastered with cartoon lucky charms
and sets off the room’s security alarm
when you accidentally knock it
with your elbow and the noise
startles a woman with hair like Grandma
who drops her hot chocolate over the legs
of her son wearing Leicester City shorts.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

to the person I’ve never met
behind the door covered in pink banners.
The number of cars on your drive
and the road outside your house makes me
wonder how big your mug cupboard is.
One handle for every heart
you have turned into midweek tea.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

There’s a cat in the house
and no one knows who owns it.
Its fur is Dad’s new beard
and its tail the wooden beams
stretching across the ceiling
above people dancing in the living room
and below people sleeping.
There’s a cat in the house
refusing water from a human cup,
tip-toeing through the kitchen
wondering who it belongs to,
and why the building feels like home.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

Mona Lisa is in the toilet
pretending not to look.
Her part-smile is
enough to turn the taps off.
It’s a small space in here,
elbows touching walls,
backs touching doors,
head touching ceiling.
She doesn’t deserve
to be here, all not real
and cramped in a box
avoiding the eyes of
a man unsure how
to think about nuance.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

You are in
your first football kit
eating biscuits
smiling at a camera.
I am by a river
on the other side
of the universe
in front of three screens
holding a mouse
that doesn’t know
how it got here.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

Chewing gum sits on the train seat
like anybody who has ever sat on a train seat,
looking out the window counting trees
silently whistling to forget how its brain
is stuck on the same track. Did you remember
the kitchen roll, the potatoes? Don’t forget
to double check everyone knows where you’re
going. Keep going. Get jammed in the teeth
of a commuter hoping to wipe away
the smell of raw red onion from a sandwich
on the go. It might be worth checking
the man opposite has finished with his
bottle of juice before you head to the toilet
because I think there’s a bin near the door.
Keep an ear out for your phone
in case you’re ever free.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

Emails catch me off guard when I’m being a human.
I think about microwaves
wishing they could take a coat of plastic
casing off in the summer, kettles screaming
that their insides are boiling. We’ve all done jobs
we hate. Do alarm clocks want to wake us up?
Our television winks when we turn it off
and sighs when we turn it on. I feel
my joints in the middle of the night
dreaming of being made out of the metal
used for the wings of airplanes.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

There’s a pig on the shower tiles
made out of blue bath crayons.
It looks tired. Its tail is barely attached
to its wonky body. It’s learning how to be
here, unable to move its mouth
the way we are around it. It’s watching
everything, it’s watching nothing,
it’s completely unaware it is a pig
and not a pig and how loved it is.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

She holds you by the edges,
desperate not to leave a smudge.
Her eyes are see-through, crisp.
Every word she says is clear and laid
gently like you’re the only one alive.
Look up and you will know what to say,
what to sing, what it means to be
in a room built for you to yell.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

stand in a pyramid like cheerleaders
proud of their mate who’s in the show,
the one on the back bit of the toilet.
I just searched online for its name
and an illustration suggests it’s called the tank.
I was born pretty much the same way
as adults who know words like shut-off-valve
and don’t particularly smile at floor flange.
What do they do when they brush their teeth?

© Carl Burkitt 2022