Michell Madsen is a good example of a growing band of poets who have learnt their craft by performing live. If you only encountered her poetry on the page however, you would just think "poet" and find no need to get weighed down by a "performance" prefix or wonder whether this is that mysterious Spoken Word you have heard about. Maybe Michelle is a cross over artist who is at ease in both poetry worlds, she certainly understands better than most that “page and stage” operate inside the same tent. The poems collected here show a flair for structure and technique that only serves to strengthen work written first and foremost with the microphone in mind. From wild romance to dark satire Michelle’s poetry contemplates love, lust, physics, politics, identity and gastronomic oddities. ‘Michelle Madsen is one of the few poets I know whose work is as good on the page as it is performed. Her poems are what I send to those who protest that spoken word poetry is not proper poetry.’ Hollie McNish ‘Promises sparkle, and champagne and glittery dresses. As do lying eyes, glass in the gutter and the hen-do aftermath. Whether it’s sported proudly or tossed to the kerb, an engagement ring shines, a winning smile gleams and Michelle Madsen’s poetry surely sparkles.’ Tim Wells ‘Michelle Madsen is a top bird!’ Salena Godden

2. ‘Michelle Madsen is one of the few poets I know
whose work is as good on the page as it is performed.
Her poems are what I send to those who protest that
spoken word poetry is not proper poetry.’
Hollie McNish
‘Promises sparkle, and champagne and glittery
dresses. As do lying eyes, glass in the gutter and the
hen-do aftermath. Whether it’s sported proudly or
tossed to the kerb, an engagement ring shines,
a winning smile gleams and Michelle Madsen’s
poetry surely sparkles.’
Tim Wells
‘Michelle Madsen is a top bird!’
Salena Godden

3. Burning Eye

4. Copyright © 2014 Michelle Madsen
The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means without the prior written consent of Burning Eye Books, nor
be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than
that in which it is published and without a similar condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This edition published by Burning Eye Books 2014
www.burningeye.co.uk
@burningeye
Burning Eye Books
15 West Hill, Portishead, BS20 6LG
ISBN 978 1 90913 621 2

5. Little Green Men
Astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars (pulsating stars)
in 1967 while a postgraduate student at Cambridge. Her thesis
supervisor Anthony Hewish won the Nobel Prize for Physics for
the discovery in 1974 alongside radio astronomer Martin Ryle. Bell
Burnell was overlooked by the prize-giving committee despite being
responsible for the discovery, one of the most notable of the 20th century.
A thick halo of light rings your eye.
Child’s lashes flicker in the morning sun
Lay flat against a waxen eyelid
As you fight the urge to blink
Curious, if unimpressed by syllabuses and classroom chat
Your brain skirts the universe in bold leaps
Set free by a visit to the observatory
Icarus would have envied your wings.
A blink, a pulsing flash of time
And you’re beating back the Glasgow rain,
In classes with girls who listen and answer
But knit booties for future babies under their books
Men don’t like girls who are too clever, they say.
But you’re watching the shutter slide back
Over the telescope’s voyaging eye
Feeling your heart jump as it’s pushed to the lens
The havoc the stars play on its strings
This is it, life beyond imagination
Kiss the sky, eat it up
By the banks of the Cam the ground shifts
Opens a door to another world
As the people come and go
Trickling stream and careless laughter
20

6. You, eyes to the sky,
Grow strong, sinews tighten and tan
From clinging to tops of telegraph poles.
This week you’ll map the universe
Listening in to other worlds
As Phoebus heaves the earth ever forward
And when the science men,
Nodding and wise in their Scandinavian towers,
Forget that it was you
Ear pressed to the door of life
Who heard the blips
The dancing feet of little green men
The warning lighthouse flares
Of a thousand ghosts of suns
Re-writing our understanding of life,
You’ll ruffle your child’s hair,
Climb the telescope, eyes tipped to the sky,
Lid rimmed in a halo, unearthly bright,
And smile.
21

7. Girl On Girl
Why of all carbon breathing beings choose me?
Crepuscular raider, lady fly with dancing legs
Mincing through the gloam, on bended knee you beg
Succour of me, saw through thin skin to spy
Open vessels for your as-yet unborn young.
Original skin diver, lace-winged queen among
Culicidae, your screaming inevitability makes
For uneasy night music. I want to snap and break
That unsheathed proboscis before I
Lie as prone as a lion’s hypnotised prey.
Yet you breed as nature feels needs must breed
And who am I to protest, I as yet unblessed
By babes in arms, or in your case, a clutch of eggs?
I demur to nature’s whimsy and agree to bleed.
22

8. How Real Models Lose Weight
I’d like to go in at the waist instead of out.
I’ve seen how good other girls look
With fake gems glimmering in their flat bellies
I watch them in magazines
They glitter on the page
Their thin brittle limbs are shiny trim
Clutched possessively by interchangeable Adonises
Torsos carved out of pixelated marble
Seen through a grainy telephoto lens.
I’d like to be one of them.
Unlike them, I’m not fragile
I wouldn’t break if you dropped me
I’d bounce. The oodles of bulk under my skin
Might bruise but I would be intact
Protected by the layers which pad and fill the whole
Of my fat inside and out.
My problem is I see food everywhere. It litters the fridge
And on the street outside my door
It’s advertised in glowing letters.
Night beacons and day sirens
Alert it to me. I want to be able to
See through it, shed all of its constituent bits
And be wraithlike. A string of cells
Built on air and a hopeful scaffold of bones.
34

9. I’m in the thrall to the flaking layers,
The pulps, mulched tendons and muscles.
Stripped of skin, I dissolve into spots
In the unguents and emulsions. The foams
Mount, we urge it all out in bitter founts
Again and again and again. But I remain
Wide and heavy as an army of lead cadavers,
heaped in a lime pit.
So I weigh up the issue and sew my lips together
With a knitting needle I find in
The drawer where the freezer bags are kept.
I stab at them all, they wheeze release.
I use a sanitised butcher’s string
It stings when it goes in and out
As my lips draw together
Into a bloody permakiss.
It takes a while but the pounds start to go
And I glow with quiet pride from the creaking
Desert of my empty insides.
I’ve eaten my all my words, they sustain me
Jostling for space in my shrinking belly.
It’s been a long time since I had a conversation
But I don’t doubt that reduced
And silent I am a better table companion than before.
I watch you eat, I smile. You don’t see it.
35

10. The caked blood turns black
My lips fuse into a rosebud of promise
Which cracks when you touch it.
I will use it to address the letter
To the glimmering magazine editor
When I am as flat as a page.
I’ll have shelved that hefty third dimension
And those pesky other selves
And I will package myself in a box
Snugly held in place by handfuls of scented sawdust
Perfumed with sachets of free cologne samples.
Poster rolled, I’ll be their centrefold darling
Unfurled, no curves, just a smile pulled taut
Around my golden-skinned mates
And a steely diadem in the middle
Of my fleshless model self.
36