Jilly Johannsen

The Wayback Machine

Cobwebbed, the Wayback Machine: a one-off Mandarin cheesecake from the Turkey Farm and Bobo’s own dish lingers on the cracked cottage sink drainer. The downy tinge of trout pink over the Basin Stone and cutting liver with the hair scissors for an ear-tipped black cat. Ours but not ours. His name rings out. Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. Cheese in a cake and hay fever, all year round. Grim intonations that another’s been found. The hissing gramophone and Disney classics 45s. Bradford’s too close for comfort. Bleaching tripe in onions. Half-drunk tea in the cup she liked: saternal rings inside. Them lighting up and evanescing into clearances of days; clearances of seasons; clearance of years. An entire childhood found. Cool Harebell fields and cuckoo spit. A 7-D picture show. Bobo appears fit as a fiddle as the lowered dish clinks down. 

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Jilly Johannsen (she/her) is in the second year of her PhD in English in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities & Law at the University of Teesside. Jilly writes poetry and is an oral historian. Her PhDproject ‘Blabbermouth: An interpretative poetic study of the Kariba Dam’ seeks to reveal the untold realities, stories, myths, and injustices surrounding the construction and life of the Kariba Dam, which was built between 1956 and 1959 in Southern Province, in Zambia. Bodies of literature that Jilly is interested in are those of Alice Oswald, John Clare, Muriel Rukeyser, Seamus Heaney, Juliana Spahr, and Homer. Jilly is also a Literature teacher at International School Lusaka, in Zambia.