Meryl Pugh

content note: alcohol

Smell of fermenting turnips in the carriage,

of cumin on the escalator. To have

an odour that particular. What’s mine?

It isn’t air, so done with this city, 

clutching the Ventolin, down Baylis Road – 

muggy, filthy choke – to sag before

the chiller cabinets striking cold 

into my soaked t shirt, too much to choose from.

Cold sheets. Was it the beer? Sweat – mine, sharp, sour – 

a chronicle-artifact: Face flaming, laughing, 

voice high in the throat, hands all over him, 

astounding fact of the body. The pub, 

the night, the whole city – 24-

hour gym, open car window – perspires, 

respires our animal life. And the dear one, 

snoring beside me, smelling of baked beans.  

teaches for Poetry School and UEA.  Her first collection, Natural Phenomena (2018) was a Poetry Book Society Spring Guest Choice and longlisted for the 2020 Laurel Prize.  Wife of Osiris (pamphlet) is forthcoming from Verve in 2021; Feral City (creative non-fiction) from Penned in the Margins in 2022.