Three Poems by Claudine Toutoungi

when I walked into the river wearing red shoes in December

I was desperate for a metaphor
it was a cri de coeur
I subliminally hoped to climb back into the womb
or collapse the perpendicular
or rub shoulders with the heron
it was protest poetry
I was harbouring an urge to be dunked like a witch
or my shadow-self called me
or my process unravelled
I was dictating alexandrines about the climate into my phone
I was unburdened by gravity
I was embracing depth
I was swirled insistently in the river’s comradely grip
it was buffoonery... tomfoolery...
a Deleuzian assault on the field of intensity
I like to grimace....I like to splutter
I aspire to be picked out from the skies and hailed as a meteor
I was high on nearby fungi
It was the bipedal equivalent of slurring your speech
or did I seek....did I seek...
did I secretly think—no my public needs me!
or —how utterly divine to have the rug
pulled out from under me—

salvage

I have opened a window let it not be said

the day has been wasted I have opened a window

my casement window lay the cool breeze on my cheek

I have opened a window yellow grass

a superfluity of roses bowing their rotting heads

I have opened a window a room to some degree

freed from stupor I have opened a window

leaned out and am leaning shed and am shedding

soft clumps they do not go quietly

the black cloud trailing me all day

I have opened a window what is there to send out

but a small bird with a sleepy eye

nothing below it will shriek

but wonderment and carnage on the wing

it will turn off half its brain

Remember the flamingo

pushing the white pipe
-cleaner of her neck
around the surface
of the lagoon

such a bright day

the pale juvenile
beneath the waters
looked up hope
-fully

and did the same

Claudine Toutoungi’s poetry collections, published by Carcanet Press, are Smoothie (2017) and Two Tongues (2020), which won the 2021 Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Poetry Review, PN Review, The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Spectator, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, The Financial Times, and elsewhere. Claudine’s plays Bit Part and Slipping ran at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, and Slipping featured in New York’s Lark Play Centre’s HotINK series and was a Best Play Finalist in the 2015 Audio Drama Awards. She has written multiple audio dramas for BBC Radio and as a performer, her contributions to festivals and events across the UK include Tongue Fu, Kendal Poetry Festival and Shubbak at the National Theatre River Stage. She has been featured on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, In Touch, and Poetry Please.