Day Six

Winner of Spain’s National Prize for Literature
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Carmen and I walk with a back room gait
into a bowling alley shaped like a literary genre.
“Fantastical!” we say in unison.

Carmen is made of ink and signs covering her
like a tight-fitting polka dot dress.
I’d try and sleep with her if I had a chance.

Carmen speaks like a ticking typewriter,
etching her sentences into my ear
with a full stop like a gavel.

There is nobody in the bowling alley but Carmen and I.
Chinese whispers brush the air in a multitude of languages.
I take off my new shoes and she shakes her head.

Carmen knows I know. She walks towards me
and plants a kiss on my lips
like a metaphor you wish you has come up with.

She waits until I’ve bowed my head in submission
and raps as carefully as possible on my skull.
My eyes pop out like potted balls into the net of her hands.

“Good,” she says. I can see the things she’s hidden
in the lines of her skin. It all makes sense.
She bowls my eyes one after the other

and knocks down every pin, leaving a space
like eyeless sockets.
“Fantastical!” we say in unison.