Selected Poetry by Cora Ruskin

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A Poem About Wanting Less

I want less noise inside my head.

I want less noise outside my head.

Sometimes, I would like to be headless.

Bodyless. Just a bit of water and salt in the ocean.

Yesterday I saw a woman breastfeeding a baby

while her toddler tugged at her arm and her partner

came and kissed her on the mouth

without taking either child, left her

bending like a tree with heavy fruit.

I don’t know how anyone can stand to be touched that much.

I want less sunshine slicing my eyes.

I want less wind boxing my ears.

I want less weather.

Give me a day plain as porridge.

I tell people I’m overwhelmed

and they feel bad and invite me to lunch,

heaping spaghetti on my plate. Tangle of textures.

The guilt of wishing for less food

tastes almost as sour as the three Christmas dinners

when I wished for less family.

I want fewer cars on the road.

I want fewer people on the pavement.

I want less life in the world, at least

the type of life that talks and builds cities.

I can’t decide on the worst kind of more.

Probably the kingish kind,

wanting more power and wealth, but

when a friend wants more, that sucks too because

even though it usually just means sex

it still means everything you have given

is too small to satisfy.

I want fewer phone calls.

I want fewer emails.

I want fewer poems about longing.

I am full to sickness with other people’s hunger.

How long can a person live on nothing?

I could try eating air like the saints

or finding music in the empty sky.

I think I could go a really long time without love

but that’s a dangerous thing to admit.  

Main Character Energy

The woman who tells me the lack of weekend appointments is

just not good enough

is a Professor of Economics.

The one who can’t do Thursday because of the

big meeting is a Zoologist

and I hear my phone voice as the croak

of a faraway vulture, eyeballing bodies –

their failing flesh and ruby blood –

with faint disdain.

I tell another mother

her son’s slot is gone due to staff sickness.

Behind me, a nurse laughs then coughs

like a bit of rib has broken off and is rattling around inside her.

Next on the waiting list is a writer.

I want to revel with her, tell her

my head is also a writhing nest of words.

But all I can think is Fuck, I hope

she doesn’t write hospital poems.

I would hate to be a line

about how the NHS fails so thoroughly

to orbit the planet of each unique body. 

Cora Ruskin is an author of fiction and poetry, including the YA novel Other People’s Butterflies (published by Art Over Chaos) and the poetry chapbook Mostly Soldiers (published by Stanchion). You can follow her writing journey on her blog, www.corastillwrites.wordpress.com. She lives in Bristol, England, where she works as a secretary.