Ray Morgan

Biography

A poet and writer-down of overheard conversations, Ray completed her degree in Creative Writing in 2007 from Roehampton University. She has performed her poetry on BBC Radio 1, and had her work published in Fat Quarter, Inkspill Magazine, Storm in a Teacup, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Sleepy Orange and Pygmy Giant, and had a poem published in the Bugged Anthology in 2010. Ray is Assistant Director of arts organisation Sundown Arts, which curates events in Essex and London. She has performed her poetry at many venues and festivals. Ray self-published her first collection of her poetry, I am the swell of each wave, in 2014 and sold over 100 copies. She has a day job in marketing and is writing her first novel. For her non-poetry blogs, Ray's tumblr is http://raymorganwrites.tumblr.com/

Samples

White bird I'm watching as a bird wheels against a sky that bruises dark grey, ominous and brewing. The bird is lit bright white from a sun that's about to go in, a jarring tick against the gloom. We woke this morning to another scroll through news stories, of sadness, death and fear. What a world we've become. Where people who love, help, aid, are punished through a swelling of hate. It's become expected to find an atrocity flash up on phones that we blindly stab at, lurching from one story to the next. They say hope not hate, but some mornings it's hard to breathe. A growing fear sweeps the country. Innocent people are suddenly the enemy. Clouds roll in. We need to encourage togetherness, safety, a feeling of optimism. Otherwise what else have we got? The bird sweeps in circles, the sun goes in; the bird blends into the grey. Rain-on-sea The rain is chucked back up and salt-warm as it smashes onto the water. Pins dart up, grey-on-grey, the peninsula has disappeared. A foghorn, a crow caw, the air is brine. The clouded fret, a moving mass, it creeps and smothers and folds rain out over it all. Wet on wet, the estuary swells and foams, pocked with drops and gull-free. The air is brine; a chimney looms out of the fog. A ship slices by, eyes blinking yellow light. Sudden calm, quiet, a degree cooler. It starts to clear. Cockleshells A burnt white sun, two piles of cockleshells, your hand in mine. The crunch and burst of shells under feet under the wheeling gulls. Gloves, two pairs, The sting of cold making beetroots of our cheeks, our glossy eyes watering. Mirror mudflats, like pools of silver cloth and a gurgling tide, seeping in. We made faces at the thought of cockles and began the long walk home. Mist I love it when there are folded blankets of mist hanging two feet from the dewy ground, moored and bobbing like starched underblankets, a child's chalk line in the air. Spiked grasses fail to puncture it and saturated moss has never been so protected, sleeping underneath. A burnished sun fights for attention, touching the cold morning with gold, forgiving fingers reflected in the hungry eyes of twenty-six reeling gulls, spinning their way towards Pitsea landfill site. Scrabble Lay me down across your Scrabble board and I’ll shuffle my tiles - I will challenge your rack until you beg for mercy. Explore with reaching hands for those remaining letters; and I will open up my triple word score if you play by my rules. Count up for me my score, and cover your letters from my curious gaze. We slide the tiles across the clean sheet of the board, your mouth curls as you spell out the words. I surrender all my letters for a fifty-point bonus; you are left, red-faced with blanks. Drum and Bass: The sick thump of bass is seeping up through the ceiling, creeping into my eardrums to the thud of my heart. My own blood pounding, boiling with rage, becomes in sync with the thick, heavy, booting bass. A bleary eye searches for the time on the clock and winces at the sight of 3am. A hand scrabbles for a phone flicks open the screen and waits to confirm the time and yes, it really is 3am. Peals of arrogant laughter rise up through the floorboards filling my head with hate, eyelids stung with tired. Hot eyeballs seethe with the pain of no sleep, and the drumming keeps on until finally, at 6am, my alarm goes off. To London: I try my hardest to make you break up with me. I have grown tired of your self-importance, and the way you make me feel. We are in the centre of you. You push me onto sweating underground trains and expect me to not mind, when someone else’s body is clammy, pressed up to mine. We go south-west. You make me walk down upturned roads full of nannies, builders, face-lifts, dog-walkers, roads thinly disguised as representing affluence. We go south-east. You make me feel unsafe going home on my own in those areas I do not belong in, and do not think to protect me. I dream of escaping to a creamy, country housewife with dimpled elbows who will welcome me with baked goods and smiles, and we will sit with an uninterrupted lack of noise. You try to make me jealous with your scores of streetwise schoolgirl fans but this pale attempt does nothing to warm me. I cannot commit to you when you make me feel so cold even in the middle of July. I have grown to hate your touch, and shrink away when you suggest a weekend together; I see enough of you in the week. I think this is the end of us, and I am sorry that I entertained this for so long. I think we knew it was doomed from the start. I know that you will survive; you can thrive on rebuilding yourself after destruction better than any lover I know. But I am leaving you for someone who takes the time, and gets to know me, someone by the sea, or looking out on fields. Water bottles You leave your bottles of water still wet with cold, emptied and spent on tables in rooms like a calling card. Your safety device is fifty centilitres of nature’s finest, screw topped, sports capped, never flavoured always favoured. If you ever went missing, (a thought that makes me shrink and wince inside) we would all know how to follow and find you. Look for the Highland Spring. The Volvic. The hollowed blue plastic full, of the magic substance that gives your skin that glow. I follow your trail. Sunday, teatime. My knees were an arm rest as I sat cross legged on the brown carpet floor. My palms were a chin rest as I gazed at the television in our Sunday routine. The Chronicles of Narnia, wincing at the White Witch, heart warmed back again by Mr. Tumnus. I was not in my living room, surrounded by my mother’s legs and my grandmother’s hand-lotion scent, I was in Narnia, slippered feet on snowy ground, a cross between Susan and Lucy. It was post-roast dinner, an afternoon spent whining and impatient, wondering why adults have to sleep after heavy meals. My dad washing up, I would look out into the garden all brackish and wintered, and long for some snow. In came the tray: cheese and pickle sandwiches, tomatoes and cucumber to soften the crusts left on the plates, a pot of tea. A bowl of my other grandmother’s pickled onions. Why are my memories of Sundays always in winter? We ate and escaped. I longed for Turkish Delight. Rocket Lament There is a leaf of curling Rocket dying on the stairs. Unflapping, like those fortune-teller fish you could get for 10p in the toy section of a newsagents. I must have walked past it at least three times today; but nobody, not even me, picks it up or throws it away.

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.

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