Six Poems by Galia Admoni

I don’t want to talk about Joe anymore

but I ask whether they watched Brassic last night.
I say acting is tough but really I mean
I want to make things easier for him.

It’s less complicated with Charlotte,
who knows, though I still want to
apologise each time I
accidentally mention
his name.

I don’t want to think about Joe anymore

but he pushes in regardless,
bullishly indifferent.

He asks me what it means to not exist.
I tell him I’ll think about it.
He shouts at me to answer.
I want my tongue to come loose.

Because how can I tell him he’s only the
belch of something real? And how could I explain
to the others that he’s real to me?
That we can look for our keys and not
see them in front of us if
we don’t believe they’re there?

There’s no balm for
this type of breakdown.

I don’t want to hear Joe anymore

but it’s hard to see any kind of future if you
can’t even make it to the drawer
to get some pants to put on.
Spending most of your efforts trying to
keep the houseplants alive.

From the next room Joe shouts
something sweary and insulting about
the dog or the shopping.

He’s so natural – it’s like we’ve somehow
done this before, except we haven’t,
because none of it’s real.

I used to think that when you tugged on a
thread like that the whole world would
unravel, but somehow I can know it’s all
brainwaves and still hear the click of his
vape in the next room.
Smoke and mirrors, eh?

A recurring dream in which I am invited to join the star-studded sofa from the audience of a popular chat show that Joe has never actually been on

From his velvet swiveller, Graham smiles and gestures for me to join
him, in the middle of the show.

Some nights he even runs into the crowd to take my hand and guide
me down the steps, to the stage.

I sit on the sofa with the stars, different most nights, though Joe is
always there.

Joe dreams

about his Grandma Sadie, the smell of
stale Superkings, strong tea and the
machete in her drawer that could
chop a child’s head off.

He dreams about his dad. He was a
fucking hero, metal working his way
through the factory in his mind.

A classic man of place.
Working with hard things
never hardened him.

Joe isn’t happy when I obsess over Paul McCartney

because however hard he tries, he’ll
always be fragile, though

seeing his name on
the cover
(instead of Paul McCartney’s)

will help. I imagine him reading
about himself.

Note: The information in ‘Joe Dreams’ comes from an interview of Joseph Gilgun by Rebecca Nicholson from The Guardian in 2019.

Galia Admoni is Head of English at a school in London. She has poems in Anthropocene, The North, Streetcake and others. She placed third in Briefly Write’s Poetry Prize in 2022. She is on the London Association for the Teaching of English committee and has lectured at BFI, Shakespeare Institute and British Library. Her debut pamphlet will be published in 2024. Follow her on Twitter @@galiamelon