Outside
You are the red leaf, the dry, dead red leaf:
when it is gone into dust, you are gone.
You are the shadow in the street, looking up
to be let in; out there, angry, alone.
You have no father, sister or brother.
You took them away from yourself one day:
The moon stood in the air beside the sun
and you made it clear you would have your way
no matter what it took – there was no price.
Blood’s determination, a world apart
and flat, and love – life – drained to the shadow:
these things, and more, enough to stop your heart
yet you watch now and listen mute. Begin
the repair, for your mother says come in.
After the Last Minute
I found myself in a new room which was not strange.
There was a tea stain and blood on the curtain’s hem.
From the window, the grey sea lay beyond the street.
We could not find the phone
the passport the
necklace
In the garden, all overgrown, were windfalls,
many apples clogging the steps. You must take care
not to stumble for you might be brought to your knees.
We are getting out now, as the darkness comes in,
leaving the deserted house which is still full of things,
shutting the small door which was shut for the last time
on the stairs ascended for the last time, reaching
a strange new room with a cup of tea and, beyond, the sea.
— Alan Dunnett’s poems have appeared in Poetry and Settled Status For All (2022 anthology), London Grip New Poetry, Across The Margin, Mono, The High Window, Dodging The Rain, The Crank, The New European. Film-poem Assassin awarded a 2020 Best Rhythm & Poetry for Berlin Deadline at Berlin Underground Film Festival. Wrote/voiced the film-poem Interrogation, Best Experimental Film at the Verona International Film Festival 2019. A collection, A Third Colour, was published by Culture Matters in 2018.