Livvy J Hopper
Article
Livvy J Hooper is a poet and short fiction writer, artist, and budding journalist based in South East London.
Shortlisted for the Jane Martin Poetry Prize in 2014, she self-published her first collection of poems and illustrations - Grey Animals: Gourmet Edition - while studying for her undergraduate degree that same year and writing for Cultured Vultures Webzine.
Email: livvyjhooper@gmail.com
Website: www.livvyjhooper.co.uk
LinkedIn: in/livvyjhooper
Twitter: @finchfm
View as PDF: Livvy J Hooper - Poetry
A Coffee at Hotel Ibis
an open lobby looms upside down in coffee tables
oil-soaked candle wicks decanting light
through noise;
dogless bones sit cracking bottles and teeth
drifting through sterile beds
and the homely;
builders are controlling light and air with sculptures
wire-globes hung like chandeliers
twisting glass;
slatted interior balconies zoopraxiscope men
around electricity-soaked pillars
and mirrored walls;
waiting rooms and bars are copulating for audiences
that sit brittle like thread wound
through springs;
static travellers throw coins at substituted glasses
blinking newsreaders and tickers
telling time;
taking a soft-seated momentary lapse in judgement
as a precursor to the rattling journey
women wait.
city simpatico
dismantled hooks and parsed negatives strung
with ice hang limbs from accumulated architecture
processing some evident truth while
silhouettes of two-legged detritus suck the stone.
stained towers and spiked skylines
drape clouds around their glass shoulders
trawling rhythm for company the topped out
saddle of the city sunk.
films with no screens and cautious storms
wring blood from metal droplets
as a kiss splashed art onto ribs
you ate the meat torn from bone
feet creaking around verbs and
alchemy soaking into strangers’ faces
the crack in outer shells crowned to death
for profit and peeling scalps.
entangled vices and tonal ticking
spreads across the walkways dry like heated veins
healing your rump and shank with
the cutouts of discovered sound.
Linoleum
Lying starched on starched white, disinfectant wine
and concrete pudding cups lining fake window sills;
through black spider grids, greymaned snoozers lilt
between linoleum reflections and clipboard shutters,
holding vigils and tiny hands in rebellious sleep,
hearing tick then bleep and distant porter clatter.
Stashed in the wrong ward, small warmth tucked under
I-promise-no-one-died-on-these sheets, just below that
crane-borne screen bleating money gulf into blank eyes,
books banked on carbon-copy cabinets, rippled cups.
Wilting now into sleep, or pin-cushioned into
muscular droop, dreams and time conflate visits;
hurried wheeling under blank fluorescence, blurring
strips of light while red paste slides back into ears and
eye line drifts onto the spilt self, spattered on cardboard collar
the stripped Rorschach bloom discarded poorly in peripheral
or; a scheduled lidlift after blood is threaded stiff,
one hand counting out consciousness, the other
counting it back in: wrist wired shut with it,
nodule taped to paralysis and stinging lines.
Applying pale goop to stitched eyes in a private bathroom,
nurse leaning outside the door; or the taste of metallic pus
sweating out a swollen tongue behind
a cherry-red wishbone sigil taken on the chin.
