A Poem-Shaped Thing

Last Night

I dreamt that Tim Key

was in an advert for Grolsch

there was a Miliband in space

and you were in the back garden

retching up a kitchen.

 

You coughed up the spoons without a problem

tinkling into the flowerbed

where they bounced, for a moment,

like landed fish.

But the appliances caused you grief

and you braced and grunted

as you heaved a fridge-freezer onto the lawn.

 

I crossed my fingers that the oven would be electric.

‘Oh, how lovely,’ I said, as you coughed a rusted gas range onto the grass.

You could tell I was inauthentic -

reading from the litany of vague praise 

reserved

for other people’s hideous children -

and asked me to go inside.

‘I’ll finish up alone,’ you said

And you did.

And I woke with the feeling that you would hold this against me forever.