Sunday at the Skin Laundrette by Kathryn Simmonds

The World Won't Miss You for a While

Untie your boots and separate your toes,
ignore the compass wavering north/north-west.
Lie down with me you hillwalkers and rest

Quit trailing through the overcrowded streets
with tinkling bells, you child of Hare Krishna.
Hush. Unfurl your saffron robes. How sweet

the grass. And you, photographer of wars,
lie down and cap your lens. Ambassador,
take off your dancing shoes. There are no laws

by which you must abide oh blushing boy
with Stanley knife, no county magistrates
are waiting here to dress you down: employ

yourself with cutting up these wild flowers
as you like. Sous chef with baby guinea fowl
to stuff, surveillance officer with hours

to fill, and anorexic weighing up a meal,
lie down. Girl riding to an interview,
turn back before they force you to reveal

your hidey holes. Apprentice pharmacist,
leave carousels of second generation
happy pills. The long term sad. And journalist

with dreams, forget the man from Lancashire
who lost his tongue, the youth who found it,
kept it quivering in a matchbox for a year.

The Boys in the Fish Shop

This one winds a string of plastic parsley
around the rainbow trout,
punnets of squat lobster and marinated anchovy,
the dish of jellied eels
in which a spoon stands erect.
He's young, eighteen perhaps,
with acne like the mottled skin of some pink fish,
and there's gold in his ear, the hoop of a lure.
The others aren't much older,
bantering in the back room,
that den of stinking mysteries
where boxes are carried.

The fish lie around all day,
washed-up movie stars
stunned on their beds of crushed ice.
The boys take turns to stare
through the wide glass window,
hands on hips, an elbow on a broom,
lost for a moment in warm waters until
Yes darling, what can I get you?
and their knives return to the task,
scraping scales in a sequin shower,
splitting parcels of scarlet and manganese.
Their fingers know a pound by guesswork,
how to unpeel smoked salmon,
lay it fine as lace on cellophane.
A girl walks past, hair streaming,
and the boy looks up,
still gripping his knife, lips parting in a slack O.

Talking to Yourself

It starts with sounds of which you're unaware:
the window, opening, gives a rusting sigh,
saying something, although there's no one there.

The bath brims over while you ask the air
what's the point? The air makes no reply.
It's used to sounds of which you're unaware.

Children see you chattering and stare,
and mothers with their trolleys wonder why
you're whispering, although there's no one there,

just artichokes, an avocado pear –
they cannot tell you how to live and die,
they're lipless, though they may still be aware.

Inside the church the shadows lisp a prayer,
and votive candles clamber to the sky,
insisting something, although there's no one there:

the priest has gone, the altar's been stripped bare.
You've never prayed, but now you kneel and try:
it starts with sounds of which you're unaware, saying something, although there's no one there.

• Extract from Sunday at the Skin Laundrette by Kathryn Simmonds, published by Seren Books.

Buy Sunday at The Skin Laundrette at the Guardian bookshop

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Kathryn Simmonds, The Guardian, Friday 29 August 2008