Jacqueline Saphra

To me, Jacqueline Saphra's poetry has got this lovely theme of fetishised domesticity about it, she peaks into other people's day to day lives, or gives voyueristic looks into first dates. I love the way she turns the familiar on its head, and she has kindly given us one of her unpublished poems from her forthcoming collection 'The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions'.

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Household Tips for the Obliteration of Green

Winning hue on weeping willow, requisite for lettuce, courgette

or indeed summer squash, green is always with us.

However: green may present as toad, snake, lizard, mildew, mould

or lichen, creeping algae, pigment of witch.

It permitted to settle on tender parts, green may grow ambitious,

permeate the skin, sully the net curtains of the heart.

My remedy: to eradicate taint of you know who, I favour continuum

from blush to pillarbox, incandescent only as a last resort.

Or try this: crimson flush, as of ruby, fire or lava. Stain his lips

with yours, take him open mouthed, one sanguine, lucid bite.

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Saphra has been published in Acumen, Magma, Staple, The Interpreter's House, Other Poetry, Orbis and other magazines. She co- organizes the monthly reading event The Shuffle, won first prize in the London Art Poetry competition and her pamphlet, Rock 'n' Roll Mamma is out from Flarestack. She is reading tomorrow at the Poetry Gazebo, a free spoken word festival in Culpeper Community Garden, Islington.