Shauna Robertson is a UK-based writer and artist. Her poems for adults and children have been performed by actors, set to music, displayed on buses, made into comic art, turned into short films and published in magazines and anthologies, including The Best New British and Irish Poets 2018. Love Bites is Shauna’s second chapbook. Her first, Blueprints for a Minefield, won the Fair Acre Press Poetry Competition in 2016 (“full of standout poems. Sometimes heartbreaking, often funny… wholly original.” James O’Leary, Sabotage Reviews). You can find her online at shaunarobertson.wordpress.com
from Love Bites
I need you to peel me
and peel me and peel me
until nothing remains
but my gem-studded soul.
This is Love’s job description.
But the minute his index finger
flicks at my outermost layers,
I reach for my gun.
*
When I speak to Love
of the jungle, tumbarranchos and toucans,
he hears the cricket pitch, eggs benedict and a buzzard.
*
Turns out Love
is 72.8% water.
Is it any wonder some days
I feel so diluted.