Popshot Issue 38 - The Roots Issue Sample

THE

Featuring poetry by T. S. Eliot prize-winner Don Paterson

OF NEW WRITING

THE VICIOUS ONSLAUGHT OF GREY

Poem by Grace Maxted Illustration by Alana Nastold

I should like to go back to my early twenties, When the lines were not quite so entrenched, I could have cool, liquid protein injected into my forehead, They warn it could blind me, but I’d give my consent.

I should really give in to my beautician’s upselling, Have my eyelashes tinted and lifted, I could have my jowls tightened, my lip-hair dyed, And for my eyebrows, entrust a tattooist that’s gifted.

I should part with my savings and go under the knife, Have the crookedness taken out of my snout.

I could go whole hog and have a facelift too, Give me a tonne of lip filler for a persistent pout.

I should do morning crunches and strengthening squats, Get all my lumps and bumps tucked like a tiny satchel, I could buy pre-emptive shaping spandex underwear, All whilst looking undeniably natural.

And as I try to keep on top of the regrowth, The vicious onslaught of grey, No matter what I do, how much money I spend, My roots, my darling, will always, always, give me away.

SWEETPEA

Poem by Anna Rose James Illustration by Hannah Clair

don’t pluck that, you are not infinite and will need it later.

You may climb every year and grow awkward new leaves, but how would you look in a vase?

Would it matter where it were placed? Your abundance is not for the shears. Not something to harvest and feed to the grave, but welcome, invited, belonging.

HEARTWOOD

Flash fiction by Chris Belson Illustration by Jiazhen Cai

The two sisters carefully walked around the huge tree. If they both started at the same point, it took exactly five steps for them to meet one another again on the other side. They marvelled at the size of it, many times trying to stretch their arms around its giant trunk to see if their fingers might connect. But they never did. In fact, that summer, they explored every inch of that tree and grew to know it intimately. They ran their little hands over its bark and read it like braille.

Feeling for knots and imperfections. Searching for faces in its gnarled skin. Memorising every word and symbol cut into its wood like a book, and noting their age by how healedover each scar had become. Dean and Cindy 4 eva. Harry was here. Paul sucks. Four love hearts, seven swear words and one stick-man.

They counted every nest hidden in its boughs. Reached in, trustingly, to every nook and hole. Whispered secrets to one another stretched out in its arms. Climbed every twisted root, and tested every limb that could take their weight, as they plotted the safe paths up into its crown. By the end of the holiday, they knew its story by heart, and it knew theirs. When the time came to leave, they too scrawled their initials onto its wooden pages, to mark themselves as a permanent part of its history, before they said goodbye.

Standing now, around the smooth, flat stump where it used to be, it seems so much smaller than it had done when they were children. They take it in turns to stand in its centre, posing like statues on its plinth. Arms stretched upwards to an absent canopy. Becoming the tree for a moment, whilst the other takes a photo. It was still wide enough to have easily contained them both in its core, were it still standing. They wrap their arms around each other inside, imagining themselves encased in its invisible timber. Like heartwood.

The rings of its life are exposed now. They count them together, from the middle outward. Two-hundred or more. Each telling the secret story of a year. The sisters’ hands are etched with time now too, as they run their fingers over the circles and search for that summer, somewhere in the lines.

WILDING

Short story by Holly Moberley Illustration by Connor Parker

My house knows when I’m coming.

From streets away, the bricks get this sixth sense. She calls it her “burglar alarm.” My house rustles and picks. Gets bored when I’m gone. She likes to dig, pluck. In the afternoon she waits, back bent over the grating until I get back from school. I like returning to her walls, her perfect bricks, cupped in a wychert coat. If there was an earthquake, I’m pretty sure my house would be the last one to fall. She has immovable foundations. She’s popular. Everybody in the High Street knows my house on a first name basis. Her doorbell is constantly ringing. In fact, even my decaying neighbours spend potentially their last hours on earth talking to my house. My house is often found in conversation with herself, especially when she’s out picking weeds by the front door.

“Hi Mum,” I say, placing a hand on one of her shoulders.

“Hey Scooby. How was school?” she says back to me, my house, my home. I didn’t mean

GOLDEN FIELDS

Poem by Megan Ellenberger

Nothing says roots like growing up in Lancaster County, watching as green fields of corn and tobacco turn golden and become a perfect backdrop for the Piker buggies (some of which may contain some distant relatives, which only my mum can point out). This place of anyone knowing everyone who is related to someone and I can show you the graves of most of my great-great-greats through several churchyards.

Here our roots are so tangled it’s almost impossible to transplant somewhere else without a lot of digging – too much work for most of us.

History and comfort hold on tightly, tethering us to what we know and trust as the fields glow gold, ready for harvest and winter’s rest.