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Two Poems By: Francine Elena
Karl Smith , December 1st, 2013 09:07

After last week's brief interlude, we once again have new writing, in the form of two poems by London-based Francine Elena

Francine Elena's poems have been published in The Best British Poetry 2013 (Salt), Clinic, 3AM Magazine and Poems in Which. Her chapbook of three tiny stories, Christmas Lantern, was recently published by 3AM Press.

She has written for travel anthology Par Avion (3AM Press) and Art Wednesday. She grew up in England, Portugal and Scotland and now lives in London.

My brain is a folded device

I mainly use

          to talk through the day

without vocal cords

          wirelessly bound

and when the line is faulty

          I draft thoughts

to send on a dark English road

          or something garbled from my childhood bedroom

and your reply is drunken too

          you might speak from a Bosnian balcony

or a Scottish library

          while I eat bake rolls and data on the Aegean

a sandwich in a fluorescent office

          and you are on a purple mountain that

looks like a screensaver

          these days are strung with itinerant syntax

punctuation miming synapse graphics

          interchange rapid impulse

                    an infinite electric knot

                                        to be read again


Francine, where did you grow up?

Was it London, like Irina Valcheva
Kenta Yoshida and 36 other friends?
Or Hong Kong,
like Daniel Matheka
Mariana Ribeiro
and one other friend?
Or Cambridge, Cambridgeshire
a place of education,
Francine (is that really your surname?)
with your friend Sophie Johnson?
You are only 80% complete.
Come on now.
Did you grow up in ‘other hometown’
or ‘I don’t have a hometown’?
‘I don’t have a hometown’?
Is that the one?
Your browsing history likes to think so.
If you ignore us,
these bright particles of light,
the question will be asked again,
the next time you are here.
The question is always here, Francine.
Its zeal is so vehement
it is an encouragement to lie.