Jasmine Ann Cooray is a writer, poet, and creative innovator. Winner of the Farrago Summer Slam and runner up at the Roundhouse Slam, she writes with soul and precision, transforming intimate everyday relationships and painting the world into something you want to look at twice. Jasmine founded the Brighton monthly sell-out performance night Floetics and is now building a signature range of site-specific creative writing workshops called WRITELondon, which generate rich material for their participants. Look out for her work in print later in the year.
Links:
www.myspace.com/jasmineanncooray
This messy room was not what you expected,
no silk-lined boudoir smelling of rose water,
incense beckoning a finger through muslin.
Instead: knickers. Pale smudged gussets
that grimace at you.
Indifferent as prison jailors to a fresh inmate,
they´ve seen it all before.
Though doe-flutter eyes and soft focus
limbs might poise prettier than this gin-doused maiden,
spontaneity is known for it's sepia tint.
Illusion was ready to lick its lips until
you tripped on a wince at my kicked off trainers,
skirt yanked round the knees, no hip coiled striptease
to ease us in and buy time to remember the names
shouted over shredded electro.
The thump still punched along our veins as we clung
to the nightbus bars, swung splat
into a shag like a promise from a weekend dad.
Your absence at daybreak pricks the same tepid teardrop.
This morning, I'm no blue movie starlet,
summer fruit mouth fresh and red, but then neither are you.
When first light's senses squint open to smoky skin,
stale mouth a stranger's dentures, I call you back.
Just one sober kiss to seal the phlegmy edges of the evening
and tuck them in, to make this bedtime story
something better than a snap decision.