Lucie is a self-professed millennial poet hailing from South Shields, with a master’s degree in Creative Writing from Newcastle University. Her interests lie in translation, environmentalism and the concept of combining poetry and music.

Living up to the millennial stereotype, she also writes Instagram poems under the alias @andalucina and has a book/music/life blog called Say it by Ear over at http://www.andalucina.wordpress.com

I am Painting the Earth on a Napkin with Coffee

I am painting the Earth on a napkin with coffee,
each smudge is a cloud stirring galaxies softly
as droplets of stardust splash onto the sky,
each pool is a bird
every grain is a fly.
Lines pressed from my finger are streams, thin and dirty,
a beetle’s footprints or the clock at 12:30,
they’re the names of two lovers carved into a tree,
the cracks in the tongue of a parched bumblebee
or the crease on your pillow,
where clever lines left unsaid, 
traipse the depths of your brow
and crawl out of your head
as the night crumples softly,
clean napkin in hand,
before cluttered shop windows and newspaper stands,
before screaming car engines
are brought to the boil,
before traffic light colours reflected in oil.  
Before egg-time spilled slowly 
and tea sipped with tears,
before cocktails at midnight and 9am beers,
coffee rings spin like Saturn’s
as my fingers trace round
the stained tables in cafes of a world tinted brown. 
I am painting the Earth on a napkin with coffee,
the world is so small
the world is not sorry. 

Bagfish 

celestial telescope  veil of calico
eggfish  lionhead  tumbler-ing meteor
bubble eyed comet and pompom scale 
blue fish  brown fish  pearl  fantail 
but I’m just a bagfish
my loyal friend you love me still
resting your head on the prison glass sill

when I move closer
I expect you to spook
you are
the fire-eater’s fire 
his admirer’s chatter
the hook-a-duck hook
you’re the hotdog grease that glitters the gutter
the popping popcorn that oozes gold butter
the fireflies floating round
salmon pink floss
the eyes of a psychic
who knows what you’ve lost

Grandmother Chi was silver and grey
dreaming she’d ride the Waltzer one day
when somebody wins me 
we’ll just swim away 

Ballad of the Sleeping Conductor

  Red, can you hear the   red?
Listen to it rushing
to the edge of a cymbal
like a blister boiling.
The metallic needle,
threading every vein,
conductor to the palmas
thumping in your   heart,
swelling with the strings
a   crimson symphony
of bows drawn to a promise.
Rainbows   ruby,  scarlet,  garnet
the brass,   copper, iron
bells burnt hotter,
pulsing walls,
the wails at once wind wells of   red.
Music is the crust of life
and ravenous you bite,
sodden, saturated,
soaked
it’s dripping from your smiling teeth
as smoking lips sever you from song.
Silence
is a glint in the eye
the eye of a   rose that looks upon a tear
and lurks in dirt
black and   red.
Empty your violin of   blood,
I’ll play you a song instead

  red, how they want you,   red