Forward Prizes 2025 | An extract from Michael Mullen’s ‘Goonie’
Posted by Michael Mullen
This week, we’ve been posting writing from the shortlistees in the Best First Collection category for the Forward Poetry Prizes – up today are two poems from Michael Mullen, nominated for Goonie, which was described by Hollie McNish as ‘an essential tribute to life and fight and love and language’.
Antivenom
I tend to them, moving through the flat
swallow-swift, clinking with each vodka Irn-Bru,
cylindrical fires,
hiss-fizz and evaporate
sedated by the tin-itch of spirits.
Smirnoff – nane ae that foreign stuff –
my aunts sit wide-legged in leather thrones,
they tell me when I haven’t got it right –
too much ice calms its bite –
too much juice foams the gullet –
and too much vodka prompts wraiths
to rave in the vapours. Just before the singing begins
my uncle tsks and knocks back his beer, saying:
Ye canny kill yersel wae thi hing thit cures ye.
POOF
& the minutes echo
Oo’s cuckoo on concrete
have you ever seen an f vibrato violence?
In the tomato glow of jackal mouths
In every queen’s dreams there’s a throng of boys
black hooded forest
huddled round the pyre
of everything
close as sweat
eager, drunk on the prospects
shagging & scrapping
Is this why
the boa choke feels a little like love?
My ogle
rebellion
he calls me a POOF in the harem of his bedroom,
the red wallpaper, pulse mimic
sheets shift stiff
his slur speaks summons
soft peak
fetishise our spectres
that’s right
you little
POOF
that’s what Cosmo & Wanda from Fairly OddParents
named their child
loveliest lilac boi
macaron eyed giddy in pastel
with each bent wrist
the magic pressed *POOF* on the tv screen
my frame slithered
feigned the same old ignorance
as they slurred so easily
on Saturdays with my brother
sugar like sacrament
dragged from my bed on weekdays
but bounced at the weekend’s dawn
sore stomach
cured
POOF
a typhoon of violet
The marshmallow jinx
POOF
the will of radiance
a teleporting
take me somewhere
ever camp
glazed luminous
I hope my brother doesn’t hear the hex
hope he doesn’t learn
my other name
POOF
quick scribbled on the post box
black on red,
the final days of a scab
dark weep on the pillar
POOF
tattooed along our timeline
POOF
how a word can skip distance
trembling owl hoot
through eons
on boy’s tongues like a birthright
POOF
I say haughty and proud
like I had single-handedly reclaimed it
pucker – consonant
double vowel moan
cliff edged – f
The old fag says I shouldn’t use that word
talks of how it scarred our people
years ago they beat him,
knocked two teeth clean out
vowel please
and now every time he hears it fresh
the word brands flesh
he hates it
he’s acting
like a
POOF
so even now
when the same boys from decades ago
igloo around their breath
for warmth
for closeness
when they see the simmer
of my mince on the pavement
They ready their lungs
whetstone the old tongue’s rapier
UR YOOH A POOF?
POOF
but I heard other-boy
POOF
but I heard mystic
POOF
but I heard
miraculous.
Ronda, Kestrels
I won’t tell you about the sun – climax of cliff edge.
Summer blooms bellowing hot colour. The vista
is classically Andalusian – heady cliché – dry rapture. Kestrels
flit from the sheer sienna sweep. Press-off edge
letter shaped
black weights
on the view’s blank page
paragraph buttress
stanza flight
verb glide
pulling taught
an unseen squall
noun fleet
sleeting
over radiating ochres
Fly – V
Descend – R
Bent – W
wind beaten
S
begging
to be
sibilant.
Extracted from Goonie by Michael Mullen, published by Corsair. See all the books on the Forward Prize shortlists here.
