I.
Three days, and I’m already

craving sparkling water, each afternoon:
sprüdeln,

how it fizzes in the mouth.

This city will not let me. I stand
at the wrong end of queues and think:

widerstand, resist, to stand against.

This is a toolbox language. 
In this bar,

you can buy the stool you sit on.
A woman on the train

hands me the word Pfingsrosen,

plucked from her backyard.
I love how it unfurls,

its increments.


II.
I think you should play the piccolo,

it’s not hard, just

two notes. Scheiße. Understanding love,

the love of hunger, is nothing.

Mum wanted to abort me,

she told me at my twenty-first.

Autumning, to blue,

I am moonswept and mouthy,

I even laugh at my boss’s jokes.

Make the poems squeal –

I’m making your fucking tea,

I’m gonna let that puppy steep.

Almost never pink, there’s a Finnish word

that means comma fucker

not looking for someone is a vexatious venture.

You can’t tell me no-one’s ever

put a baby in bath in Berlin before.

This one isn’t mine.