"Blonde bleach hair" & "Cities, surrounded by friends" by DS Maolalai

Blonde bleach hair

this is a description

of sunset. the 5pm light

at an angle on the city-

west tram. a woman

leans over with blonde 

bleaching out of her 

hair-ends. roots coming

visible – brown like the soil

beneath a hot mountain's

wet frost. flash tattoos; bicep

runs fat down a black

summer dress. sips 

from a rockshore can – 

a coppery flavour – 

a taste. she is quietly

fighting her boyfriend. 

will mount on the tram 

in a far along carriage 

to me. in the distance, not 

distant, low mountains are visible

over roofs of the new build estate houses

in rows like wet strands 

of wet hair stuck together

and a comb in the morning

in sunlight

making orderly strokes. 

Cities, surrounded by friends

I have woken to hangovers

that would cause me to weep

if I weren't so critically dehydrated. 

I have woken as well up 

to hangovers that made me feel 

joy at the sunlight

as it danced through the curtains

of life in a bedsit apartment. the point is the waking;

the moment of knowing you are there.

I've been picked up by policemen

while half-falling asleep 

at a north camden, north-

pointing bus stop. been picked up by ambulance-

men at the foot of stone steps 

under churches in close foreign 

cities, surrounded by friends.

fallon spent a night of his twenties

sleeping on a plastic chair 

in a paris emergency hospital.

I have woken in the arms of a beautiful 

woman occasionally, though generally

I push away from bodies 

and heat in my unconscious state.

DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as "a cosmopolitan poet" and another as "prolific, bordering on incontinent". His work has been nominated fourteen times for BOTN, eleven for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden" (Encircle Press, 2016), "Sad Havoc Among the Birds" (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)