Barbican Young Poets 2019-20

Peeling an orange so that the skin turns and turns into a perfect coil is

hard. It’s easier with satsumas sometimes after lunch I wouldn’t throw

my skin away, I’d prop it up in my lunch box like nothing had

happened. There was no flesh or juice but taking home a hollow skin

felt important. Victorians used to take photographs with their dead as

though they were still alive. Parent sat beside their propped up child,

hands around the empty body hoping the flash would make them

undead. Baby in a cot next to another baby. The one surrounded by

flowers is the dead one. This gallery is quieter than a funeral. At

funerals there are hymns and wailing mourners. Here the past is

turned and turned into a perfect recreation of skin, accurate down to

the tiles on the wall but there’s no body, no spirits. What is meant to be

Cabaret Fledermaus is a hollow satsuma, no flesh, no juice, just an

empty propped up corpse. We want light and we want song.*