This work was first published in Spread the Word’s Young Writers Collective Anthology, 2025. This anthology stands as a testament to the courage, creativity, and growth of a remarkable group of young poets who have spent seven months exploring the power of language and self-expression. The anthology is more than a collection of poems—it is a celebration of emerging voices, of stories told with boldness and vulnerability.
All of the poems can be read here on our website, or you can download the Young Writer’s Collective Anthology to read as a PDF.
Body At Night by Poppy Amberg
I did once have this body. These holes and rises all. One I sought displeasure from in a scratch on bark and wood. At last a finger nail did come away and bleed some on the grass. I did then sharp inhale through nose and held it there. And there in eyes aflame, I sucked that tip there dry.
Again now scrape those tips on bark. In the dark of middle night. With moon ahead and yes no wind, the night it has this bath effect. Scrape away and see what happens. Bark does yield in sudden strips in the steam of night’s near blackness. Nails do slow before they tear. Then tear and fall and nail no more.
With naked stubs of fingertips I do though still scrape on. Give thanks to tree and fluid of night for the pleasure of here now’s pain. For a night-long ecstasy. Where blood congeals in sticking palm lines and spines of blades of grass.
I do now have this body. It’s hurt is in this now this dark. So sharp inhale and feebly out at last I am my body. Release day’s hold with bleeding tips that clutch that yielding bark. Oh, here, pleasure.
Sun on rise reveals my body is not me unless submerged. A shaft of day’s translucency and oh, there, neutrality. Though finger nails do reattach in wait for sun to fall again. For night to fill the bath. For feral pleasure in pain’s warm clarity.
About Poppy Amberg
Poppy Amberg is currently undertaking an MA in Non-Fiction Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Her writing is informed by the tenets and intersections of queer theory, autotheory, and experimental writing. She lives in London.