Marcus Ten Low: ‘an avocado’ and ‘dancing on my smartphone’

an avocado

either
the flat slice
the underside of a treble clef

wobbly in your fingers
with a little mush,
tapering to pale green, like

the sunset in one’s hand,
beneath the skin of a dinosaur,
its whole pearlikeness a big prying eye,

or scoops
dealing with the
superball of a seed

that plops out, ready
to be cultivated anew, or
idle as a puzzle thing of wood—

it’s regularly badly spelt
“avacado”
like some caped superman,
or ’av a nice day

someone once told me
you were full of fat

but no,
you just look like you’ve got a bellyful
under that dinosaur skin.

Marcus Ten Low

dancing on my smartphone

doting, pretty girls,
their hair streaming long,
flow effluently from my scrolling
smartphone

into this world,
one by one, dancing, swaying
from the hips, going over the edge
or who, with the backsmudge of a finger,
come squiggling back

into view, as they smile
from their plane of color and light:

this horizon of information,
this slim trim majesty,
fills my senses with joy and fuzz,

until i drop it and it
clatters, shudders, to the ground.
this time it drops
facedown, the girl’s face speckled
in grit,

but even with the sudden jolt
to silence…she smiles bravely on.

Marcus Ten Low