FIXING THE CLOCK by Jenny Martin
Arts Richmond
Online - 17 August 2020

Lacking booklet or logic
I go at it reckless, clicking back hands
to trick it into the past before it broke.
Ear to the mechanism, I listen for the tick
like a heart. The cogs are locked.
No bells, no cuckoo, no cockerel.
No dawn cracking against the sky like egg yolk
slipping down the side of a valley.
The dark is hard like a cave wall I smack into.
Blackest, at a guess I’d call it gone midnight.
I prick my finger on the second hand
and my blood turns the three into an eight.
There are two infinities here.
What I myself wouldn’t give
to be correct even twice a day.
With a plastic toothpick I jack and jerk
the teeth of the cogs until they turn free.
The tick-tock clops its distant horse towards me.
from ABOUT TIME, the 2019 anthology of shortlisted entries from The Roger McGough Poetry Prize. Copies of this Anthology can be purchased for £5 including P&P from Arts Richmond.
FIXING THE CLOCK by Jenny Martin
EGM and AGM
Wednesday 2 December 2020, 19:30
Online via Zoom
Young Writers Festival Competition
The Roger McGough Annual Poetry Prize 2020
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