Two Poems by Claudine Toutoungi
PN Review 217, May - June 2014
Midtown Analysis
after Lorca’s ‘A Poet in New York’
Some of those edge-of-the-precipice
people are circling
smiling at breasts
asking directions to places of worship.
Sunlight glares through gaps in metal towers.
You are always walking
towards the Norman Foster building.
Men rise again
from a hole in the street.
A red hand flashes.
You reach for a cocktail
swallow a cab.
The Stock Exchange is not yet
covered in moss
but everyone’s timing is off.
The sense of scale is mortifying.
A man wants to explore your bag/
your heart/your mind
You lie upside down on his couch.
Vermont Clothbound Cheddar fills your throat.
He blames the axial
pull of the vertical.
You choke. He suggests
you try to be less literal.
Niall
i.m. Niall McCabe
In the space between two worlds
I poach an egg. It’s early.
I have fasted all night, a long night,
spent mainly talking with my spirit guide,
or rather, listening.
And when I say spirit guide, I mean
Niall, the Omagh boy from Drama School,
who used to be all thunder in the pub.
He wore his cloud-mass like a crown,
daring you to come and try and break it,
but in the dream, if he was weather,
he was a gulf-stream,
he was a golden O reciting Shakespeare
in a parlour-room with chintzy décor.
Once I was afraid to catch his eye during a love-scene,
but in the parlour-room we gazed and gazed.
No-one could look away.
Of course, I begged him, ‘How do you do it, Niall?’
because, in truth, I was desperate for his secret,
I was parched for his charisma,
but I couldn’t hear his answer.
Still it was enough to see him back again and shining
resplendent in that parlour room,
after his miserable December passing
Claudine Toutoungi’s debut collection Smoothie (2017) and her second collection Two Tongues (2020) are published by Carcanet Press. 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 other audio dramas for BBC Radio including Deliverers, This Is Your Country Now Too: Mira, seasons of Home Front, the comedy drama series The Inheritors, and several dramatizations. 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.
Subscribe to PN Review magazine at pnreview.co.uk.