I forgot the eggs by Arji Manuelpillai

Managing editor Randi Clemens on today’s bonus poem: Some days, I too, feel like all the plastic in the world is suffocating. This poem by Manuelpillai, in all of its subtleties and simultaneous explicitness, makes me question our consumptions and our pitfalls. I hope one day we can also say, "it's no longer a fucking disaster."  

I forgot the eggs

she says it’s a fucking disaster, I say I’ll be five minutes
hobbling into shoes, stagger down the rainy driveway
and there across my windscreen—
                                                     a plastic bag like roadkill

screaming blue, tangled into wipers as wet hair in rollers
corner-shop blue, bluer than sky or sea, carrier of milk
ice cream, immortality and Jesus, the eggs?
I cannot drive. It’s a fucking disaster        

          I envision myself glued to an armchair
               the plastic beast, a puffing lung
                          hovering, hugging my face
                  its tentacles wrench
                                        open my jaws
                            sticking as a shower curtain
          against my inner cheek, my throat
                                           choked                        

now I’m reaching, pincer fingered over my car, skinning
its flesh limb by limb, it clings to my wrinkled fingers
juice like oil on clothes, dropped into the darkness
of a wheelie bin, clapped shut, forgotten and the eggs

I buy the eggs, she says it’s no longer a fucking disaster
but later that week, at a drive-thru, ordering a burger
I forget to forget, sipping coke through a straw,
I cannot un-see it, a fucking disaster

            the bag breathing
reaching like octopus 
                               suckling my face
                                                each orifice filled
              crackling, slowly
                                 prizing open my lips   
                    my teeth 
   seeping
                through mouth
                                    crawling down gullet
        expanding
                                     expanding inside my stomach

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Arji Manuelpillai is a poet, performer and creative facilitator based in London. For over 15 years, Arji has worked with community arts projects nationally and internationally. He is the 2019 Jerwood Arvon mentee, mentored by Hannah Lowe. Recently, his poetry has been published by magazines including Prole, Cannon’s Mouth, Strix, Rialto, The Lighthouse Journal, and Poetry Wales. He has also been shortlisted for the BAME Burning Eye pamphlet prize 2018, The Robert Graves Prize 2018 and The Live Canon Prize 2017. Arji is a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen and London Stanza and his debut pamphlet will come out with Outspoken Press in April 2020. Visit him here: www.arji.org.