MARIONETTISATION Poem by Claire Potter

That she should have been eating
an apple underground
on the metro at 6am, was not
unusual

I have seen people before
eating on the metro: bread usually
torn from small
paper bags or
thin biscuits
picked from
plastic cylinders,

but this girl, and her reflection,
ate noisily
tearing at the lime skin & mulching
crisp pulp between
open teeth

Bright twigs of apple-
juice toppled from her palm
down her elbow &
into the tongue of a
silent shoe
& my curiosity became an apple
in the heart of a dwindling coal . . .

but then, there were also her nodding green-black
starfish eyes:

momentarily crossed on the apple, then peeled back from
forced awakedness