Eighty-two raw, fragmented, numbered poems in couplets chart the course of a marriage: passion, obsession, humour, love, sex, control, betrayal and liberation.
26. We Are Unconsciously Withheld From Others
In my dream you, the non-smoker,
are smoking a cigarette.
We are sitting at the edge of a large field
extending out into darkness.
A few of us are here but not many
we are all close friends.
Although I cannot see their faces and I know
if I looked I would not recognise them.
‘We’ sounds wrong.
I am not the owner of the dream
simply one of those watching you
watching as you talk.
You wave your hands and I know
the exact instant you have forgotten the cigarette.
I look in your eyes in that moment
the moment when the cigarette is part of your hand
as much as finger and bone and I know
something is being withheld.
You do not mean to withhold it
but if I asked you for it, you could not give it to me.
*
In The Mouth of Eulalie Annie Brechin is in love. Well, not her and not the kind of love her heroine, Juliette, desires or deserves. No, this is ‘a dark thing,’ ‘the atrocity committed by women,’ confused with sex, and that leads to betrayal and heartbreak. Crafted fittingly in couplets, the poems in Brechin's first collection confront modern relationships directly and frankly. There’s little sweet speech and much graphic telling it how it is. The individual titles for each poem in this long narrative sequence are exemplary. Brechin has a keen eye for details and description; though I’m not sure we should want to share the sumptuous feasts that are Juliette’s distractions here. They, like all else, are hers, alone. – Kate Noakes
“Annie Brechin is a profoundly mesmerising, fresh and captivating poet, somehow both tender and brutal, sharp and vulnerable. The Mouth of Eulalie is a triumph, an empowering read and as uncomfortable as the truth. I found it deeply moving and beautiful, and like all great classics I will treasure my copy of this book and read it again and again." – Salena Godden
Annie Brechin has always brought a special shape. It might be somewhat lived in, may be folded differently, not always a standard fit, but you know it’s gonna hang fabulously. – Tim Wells
146 pages.
Date of publication, 15 March 2022
