The One Way Street & Hollow-Stemmed Plastic Daffodils

An Editor’s note

We were struck at the serendipitous submission of these two wonderful poems that deal with the intimacy of interiority through reflection, and through the usage of flowers as significant figures to explore emotional states. In Alexander Cohen’s The One-Way Street and Charmayne Pountney-Board’s Hollow-Stemmed Plastic Daffodils the reader is presented with figures confined in their domestic space, in close proximity to flowers. Cohen’s dandelions, matching the title of the poem, progress along a life cut-short due to neglect. Pountney-Board’s daffodils are separated from the poem’s speaker by a window, a strict partition between the figure sat at their mirror readying themselves ritualistically for presentation into ‘the cold, reflective world’. Both poets manage to engage with ideas of care, or radical self-love and the denial of it. Cohen’s speaker is unmoving and merely observes the degradation passing them by, and one is made to witness a restrained, numbing sense of temporality that simply glosses over. Pountney- Board’s flowers bloom and wither in fragments, also indicating the passing of time but when contrasted against Cohen’s poetic figure Pountney-Board’s speaker is a flurry of preparative change and fixation, and yet embodies a vulnerability that might be seen as the other side of the coin to Cohen’s restrained immobility. We found these poems spoke on self-reflection beautifully in tandem, and both captured intense means of experiencing time and the self, something so important in the present moment when time seems to become dense and stretched thin in equal measure, where many of us simply have little else to occupy our free moments with other than our own selves, so why not love them unconditionally, hopelessly?

The One Way Street

Alexander Cohen

 “Only someone who hopelessly loves a person knows that person” 

-Walter Benjamin, Einbahnstraße, 1928

Dandelions placed in a jar
you fill it with water
so that they won’t die.
They sit facing the sun
ceremonially gazing out the window. 

But I know you too well
maybe too well to know
that you are lazy
and I wonder how
long the flowers will last. 

Soon the petals sprinkle
the windowsill
and I wonder why they
were never watered.
Now they shrivel and curl
waiting to be brushed aside. 

Hollow-Stemmed Plastic Daffodils

Charmayne Pountney-Board

It started with a pass across the glass,

by chance, she sideways-glanced

at her hidden twin, no longer snug inside,

but dragged from behind the curtain, 

hurt and shivering in the cold, reflective

world. Both had matching glimmers of curiosity

in their bold blue eyes.

Outside, the daffodils began to germinate.

At first, it was tense, the intense and hostile

stares from ten yards apart, then the posturing,

flaunting assets like a gunslinger, 

but barred from entering, the saloon doors

a slap to colour her cheeks 

and brighten her eyes. Not quite a disguise –

she wanted the world to see a pretty face.

Through the window, budding daffodils.

The twin could sense her adoration

and raised the bar. Her hair was ironed

flat as a battle helmet; then she made waves.

The Temptress, billowy and beautiful

with a hidden steel core. She coloured

her features from kid’s drawing to Michelangelo,

revealing her sparrow-bone-structure.

The butter-yellow flowers appeared.

The jealous twin recorded every moment,

made her pout for pictures,

fake it for photos – each one interrogated:

little bit off-kilter –

maybe needs a filter –

preening nearly killed her –

putting it on insta –

trying to convince her –

not to make her wince at

heels that help her mince after

one too many drinks – now, 

sessions with the in-crowd

kneeling at the brink of 

the pond. The photogenic soup.

The drive to survive with the drooping daffodils.

The twins were inseparable,

flat and shiny as each other,

the resemblance could not be covered.

Each morning before the layers of plaster and paint,

she would lean in and kiss her twin,

find herself drawn by those blue eyes, and whisper –

‘If only you loved me as I—’

Illustrated by Victoria Cheng.

Illustrated by Victoria Cheng.