Underwater in the Taxi Club
By Julia Baird
Published 1 August 2025
Underwater the sun lines wobble,
fence wire between night and day,
shifting columns of light.
Clouds of yellowtail moving
python-like in their thousands.
A wobbegong rises slowly
whiskers grazing the reef.
Our kaleidoscope eyes,
as we enter the clubs,
Oxford Street’s widdershin clock;
the ventricle chambers
a pulsing world:
chanted lyrics,
men in collars,
sequins on inked flesh,
shows that bent a thousand stares,
turned a thousand legs to springs.
We float, gazing, tattooed
sharks carry curling eggs
jam them into rock crevices,
scan the surrounds jealously. A ticking
reef: mottled purple and green, fringed
with lichen, sea urchins in perfectly round hollows.
Lazy shapes lying on the rocks.
Fat fish. Flickering fish.
Swimmers froth past, racing,
arms slapping the surface.
In she came, hair awry,
unbrushed and somehow aflame.
Wearing only a hospital gown.
Her feet bare.
Her ties barely holding.
She smiled an opiate dream,
walked to the dance floor
and began to move.
Slowly at first
arms tracing circles in the air
spinning on her feet.
Uninterested in anything
beyond the music.
Freedivers with throbbing lungs
human submarines defying gills
to soar through sea space,
limbs curve then straighten,
weightless, free, elated.
Lady gropers
still green, turning blue,
transitioning, nuzzling on weed
flashing neon blue eyelids.
Like Warhol’s Judy Garland.
Around her -
heavy-lidded drag queens
clothed in rainbows
And shiny scales.
Staggering her feet gathered pace l
began to stomp, stamp, still
beating soles on wood
her arms rose higher
moving in circles
bearing bandages and puncture wounds,
spotted with pain.
Spiral shells cling to rocks
as weed covers then conceals.
An unending curtain call
requiring no motion, no bows
no curtsies,
no applause.
To be left alone on a rock
under the sea.
Her arms became arcs, movement
under flickering lasers,
riotous ribbons of light.
Her hospital bed empty
as she danced.
This, this, this
it could not wait.
Recall a time you have looked underwater, and make a list of what you saw.
Then write a poem that disrupts the surface of things.
Julia Baird
#30in30 writing prompt
I have read poetry ever since I was little and I wrote poems before I wrote anything else. Long and doubtless terrible ones. I turn to poetry at times of solitude, rage, discomfort, uncertainty, joy, disconnection, grief, wonder - which honestly is most days.
Julia Baird
#PoetryAmbassador #PoetryMonth
