Credit: Giulia Delprato

Walked from Camden People’s Theatre to Warren Street. Called love,
agreed meet. Hung up, marvelled at the number of words.
Lemons^5 teaches you a game. One hundred and ten left.

Want to say ‘Warwick’. Want to compare Some People Talk
About Violence. Want to say “acting was good” and hat-tip
but ninety- no, eighty-five left. Have to strip it down
Like the overnight press, elucidate quick, brutish, short. No qualifiers.

Mouths and throats can make or fake almost any sound.
Otherwise? We can strike the floor in Morse or fart.
The complexity of sound is why BSL (are acronyms cheating?)
Is so different to English, down to its core, but
they don’t (twenty-seven?!) sign. Sam Steiner avoids rationalising his concept
And though politics is foregrounded with anti-‘Hush law’ marches, (ten!)
It’s ‘flotsam’ that’d go unremarked. Exquisite words endangered. Us diminished.