HANNAH PRICE - POEMS

Hannah Price is a student and occasional writer. She is currently studying for a Bachelor’s Degree and spending her time sitting by various lakes and ponds.

​in the seconds when i close my mouth

​this is because i want to fit together with you like swans,
because when neither of us speak you can hear the grass growing
without putting your ear to the ground:
 
your throat has my nose pressed to it;
beneath the line where our skin meets is a yawning expanse,
and if i close my eyes i can see
the shifting immaterial of the earth, brown and black,
breathing because you are breathing.
your breathing is not like grass growing
but i know they are happening from the same place, at the same time
and if i listen long enough i can hear
a heartbeat echoing in your collarbone, like something speaking underground.
and if i breathe as the grass grows i can see everything from here;
the expanse is an unending ground that seeks
the space below your head.
 
and when i pause it's dark enough to see the words collect,
small and distant
in my chest,
like chicken bones at the bottom of a well.

9PM

i dreamt once in the past month,
when i was so dead tired i slept for a day
off and on, strung out:
you know,
i slept so long my hair got lighter
my nails grew and my skin flushed.
i slept so long that the air around me changed, 
settling heavy and pink,
slight enough to blink away. 
      slept so long my fingerprints faded
             and my right was my left,
       so long i tripped my toes over the carpet,
             harder to consolidate,
             collect my limbs,
             connect to my head,
where my dream is still moving; 
rolled up behind my eyelids,
no sound; i think
it involved elephants, a desert. yellow heat.  
i track the grooves in my fingerprints as they itch;
tight packed nerves with the endings emptied out, 
my head is honey-slow,
my thoughts are veins actively bursting and bruising,
veins so small they're strings in the air,
just shy of a stream of consciousness.
i try to remember: 
stand in the oxidized pink air
as my breathing room burns 
orange
with each exhale

Take a Minute

Line by line, the day is made. 
Upon a box suspended from the 
Ceiling of the airport lounge, a
Clock face gleams unhindered by the sunlight,
Proud reflection broken only by a leaning, graying smudge. 
In Amsterdam the man who keeps the time is swept away by
Light and kept behind the face to
Paint each hand on as the minutes come,
To wash them off in time to paint the next; he never lies.  
6 o’clock the day begins, with
Dark still seeping through the windows, stretching over faces.
Purple circles under eyes meet shuffling feet while
From above, the man draws out the minutes. 
3 o’clock PM is drawn and  
Echoed footsteps crowd the voices on the intercom.
Painting and unseeing, never does he spare a 
Glance to any passing by below him.
8 o’clock the light will falter;
Steady hands and blank expression blot out any trace of
Tedium that might have reached the inside of the clock face
Far above the evening gleam. 
His yellow cleaning cloth is blackened by the time
Eleven comes around, 
And through the frosted glass 
The man begins to flicker back and forth,
His static presence starting to solidify. 
Quarter to twelve on the dot he’ll climb down from the box
And recover his luggage, a battered brown travel case missing a wheel. 
He’s absorbed by the crowd in a footstep, his vacancy silently ticking away. 
The clock seems to stutter, but the hands do not twitch;
They remain on the face as if nothing has changed, and at once 
From below, people lift up their eyes,
Watching in vain as the paint starts to bleed. 
Fourteen minutes to twelve, and a woman steps up to the box. 
Her fingers don’t shake as she lifts up the brush to the glass,
Her lines are precise as the seconds stop ticking
And the minutes grow long, stark and black 
While her body floats high, 
Fades gray, 
Makes time. ​