Allen, Rachael

England, (b. 1989)

Porcine Armour Thyroid

I am a gland, the smooth opal gland
of a pig, who is bubbly with glands
and the glands torn open in this pig’s
shorn neck look like droplets of sperm
on the end of your glans. I eat the glands
of pigs for breakfast, and I take a few
in pills each night, slipping down my throat
a smooth oblong, like oysters or snot.
I rub the loose oil glands in my hands
to moisturise, pale mermaid’s purses
salted like eyeballs, like lychees, and then
I bathe in some glands, slipping round
each other, the miscreant lump under skin
a gland enlarged with the promise of sickness
grey and portentous, a gland cut open
and placed within another gland creates
a geode of glands, the colour of bad livers
the smell of bad lungs, full of poor white
blood cells, or good white blood cells
or the blood work of a pig, whatever’s
farthest, most holy, to the ground.

About the Poet:

Rachael Allen, England, (b. 1989) is a poet and editor. Allen was born in Cornwall and studied at Goldsmiths College. She is the poetry editor for Granta magazine and coeditor of the poetry anthology series Clinic and the online journal Tender.

She is the co-author of Jolene, a book of poems and photographs with Guy Gormley, and Nights Of Poor Sleep, a book of poems and paintings with Marie Jacotey.

She has received a Northern Writers’ Award and an Eric Gregory Award, and was made a Faber New Poet in 2014. Allen’s first collection of poems, Kingdomland, was published by Faber & Faber in 2019. [DES-11/19]

Additional information:

Rachael Allen’s first collection, Kingdomland, will be published by Faber & Faber in 2019.
Rachael Allen is the poetry editor for Granta magazine
Rachael Allen is the poetry editor for tender a quarterly journal made by women
Rachael Allen on Twitter – @r_vallen