Jacqueline Saphra, poet, playwright and screenwriter, has been published in many magazines and anthologies. She is one half of the performance poetry duo ‘The Disparate Housewives’, was Poet in Residence at Good Housekeeping Online and her pamphlet, Rock’n’Roll Mamma, is published by Flarestack. She won first prize in the London Art Poetry competition judged by Andrew Motion and first prize in the Ledbury Poetry Competition 2007.

Thin Ice

Sometimes, talking to you is like
skimming twigs across
the dead glass skin
of a lake in winter
when what I really want
is to feel the weight
of a whole tree in my arms
and send it crashing
down into the teeming dark.

I want to plunge deep
into the slippery murk,
to tangle with weed and eel,
to live a while in the mud,
to excavate our gorgeous horror
of a ghost ship and haul it,
shrieking, into the light.