Shantung

 

It’s true that anyone can fall
in love with anyone at all
Later, they can’t. Ouf, ouf.

How much mascara washes away each day
and internationally, making the blue one black.
Come on everybody. Especially you girls.

Each day I think of something about dying.
Does everybody? do they think that, I mean.
My friends! some answers. Gently
unstrap my wristwatch. Lay it face down.

from Selected Poems (Picador, 2019), © Denise Riley 2000, 2019, used by permission of the author and the publisher

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