Three Poems

by Ewan Glass

I know you

like the pores on the back

of my hand.

It’s alarming how suddenly

loneliness comes on

when I’m gone. They say

your best work

happens when you climb

out of yourself.

I’m not convinced I can do

that but I know

I can’t climb out of you.

Charlie calls them stonkers

those nights that stretch wild to laughter / streetlit faces full of

lager, stout / from standing, comments so arch they rainbow over

/ what we feel / full and fuller, tilted to where planes fly / and we

clink / To New Beginnings, feeling it true / yet framing it

always:     arch    arch      arch.

If anyone tries to hold me accountable

from a person on the street

to the mother of my child

I will hold my breath so hard.

The speaker is not the poet;

the poet, in this and most cases,

is a bunch of iPhone cables

in a drawer; trying to connect

but avoiding all charges.

BIO: Ewen Glass (he/him) is a screenwriter and poet from Northern Ireland who lives with two dogs, a tortoise and a body of self-doubt; his poetry has appeared in the likes of Okay Donkey, Maudlin House, HAD, Poetry Scotland and Ex-Puritan. His debut chapbook ‘The Art of Washing What You Can't Touch’ is published by Alien Buddha Press. Bluesky/IG: @ewenglass