Two Poems by
Tallulah Howarth
Drinking Vanilla Tea with You
makes me laugh because you’re not plain,
but you are sweet
and your back in the sun was the same colour
as the drink in our mugs.
Our language is just waking up.
You owl your stressed dancer’s neck.
I comment on your keen canine teeth
– how I find them quite sexy.
Winter is beginning to relent.
Later we will roll out of bed into
the community farm, past a couple jogging.
‘Jack – Kerouac – no – punctuation’ she manages,
punctuated by her own heavy breaths
This Morning
you awoke and realised you were made of felt.
You ambled over to the mirror and looked at yourself
sheepishly. This is you
running into a brick wall
at speed. Your horns splinter.
You looked at the calendar and
in Wednesday’s place
there was a new alternative day –
Thuesday. You didn’t know
what to think about that.
You tear through the floor towards the fridge
and only pill bugs fall out just thousands
of pill bugs. Why are you finding this so difficult?
You scratch your back trying to locate the itch
– searching for the light switch in a dark room
Tuesday, Thuesday, Thursday.
It made sense the more you thought about it.
Tallulah Howarth is a UK-based multidisciplinary creative, a graduate of the MA in Writing Poetry at Newcastle University, and Coordinator of the Writing Squad. They are particularly passionate about Polish jazz, foraging and archives. In 2025, they placed second in the Red Shed Poetry Competition. Her work is observational and intimate, and has been published over thirty times in zines, journals and anthologies. Tallulah Howarth is online at tallulahhowarth.com and at @tallulahhowarthcreative.