Poetry Please #4: pre-chopped carrots

A poem from my favourite poet.

Why is a bookshop so alluring? It’s as if the soundtrack of the world outside hits pause as your toes cross the threshold. A bookshop is always a place of calm, and for me, no trip to town is ever complete without stealing ten minutes of solace flicking through its pages. Just remember, when you find yourself amongst the shopping crowds in the busy streets this December, the safe haven of the bookshop will be quietly waiting. When you’re around books, library rules apply.

The amazing floating bookshop we escaped to on a recent trip to London

It was a couple of years ago when I stumbled upon Holly McNish on the shelves of Harbour Books in Whitstable. The bold orange cover of Slug enticed me over, and after saying to myself, okay just one more, a few too many times - I knew this book was coming home with me.

Holly McNish’s Nobody Told Me was my companion through pregnancy and the first year of having Joe (our son who’s one tomorrow!) but today’s poem is from my introduction to her work; Slug. If this is your first Poetry Please post - welcome! Every Tuesday, Jack and I take it in turns to share a poem. No theme, no rules, just a poem we like! Here we go…

as i sit on the train, eating a whole carrot just munching a
whole carrot,
i get funny looks

if i buy a packet of carrots, chopped into small finger-
sized oblongs of carrots for five times the price, just
munching these carrots, these pre-chopped carrots
i don’t

my daughter asked if i can please not put a carrot, like a whole
carrot like a whole carrot in her lunchbox, mum

i said what if i chop up the carrot, like the carrots you get in
those packets of pre-chopped carrots that cost five times the price

she said yeah
that would be fine

we are the only species who puts make-up on corpses
we are born
without one worry
how we look
on the outside

and when we die
we’ll look shite
but we’ll be dead
so we won’t mind

the only time
we waste with worry
about our body’s
shape and size

is this tiny-in-between-time
known as life

fairy tale
despite what adverts make-believe
sofas are no comfier to slump on if you’re ‘beautiful’

sand sieved between your toes
falls no more finely through thinner feet

the scent of perfume lingers
as fraglantly on shorter necks

sunsets burn as brutally
on any gazing irises

the birds would still have landed
on snow white’s hands, and sung for her
no matter how she looked

- eating whole carrots, Holly McNish

What do you think of today’s poem?

Just a heads up, the links for Holly McNish’s books take you to bookshop.org using our affiliate links.