I know the shape of your face
so well, I could trace it onto
the arm of the sofa
the loose flour you left on the counter
the leg of my good jeans
I see the lines of you
and the directions they run
The frame that holds you –
an original
These contours cut
into my line of vision
when you aren’t around
to look at
Nightmare, by Artie Shaw and his Orchestra.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W59FzOwYIs)
The sound is smoky and
close. The trudge comes:
a march through honey.
I can feel my rusty heart
align itself to the heavy
thunderous pulse, as
the scorched pitch of the
trumpets wheeze out their
melodies with dry throats.
From nowhere, a narrow
squealing clarinet pours up
and down the stave, like oil.
Your kind of jazz beats me
over the head and shoves its
fingers into my open throat.
My mouth is a treasure chest
a pit of language
my tongue stirs this cauldron
sounds swell
and drop out of my mouth
like heavy stones
each a swollen fruit
of differing flavours
too rich to swallow
puce
plump
pearl
colossal marbles clacking
against my palette
I savour all
sunk in the noise of it
and too drunk on sound
to climb out
Lay down
on my quilt
wrap yourself in
the tale it tells
feel nothing
in feeling everything
stretch out your hands
feel the weight
of yourself and
thread your veins
into the patchwork
bound beneath you
stitch yourself in
For just a minute
let me pretend
you aren’t there
and that the sounds
I can hear
are the sounds
of trees
softly brushing
against the sky
of rain
softly sousing
the earth
and not your
beautiful hands
softly closing
the door
between us.
When we were kids we’d sometimes
sneak out into the plum orchard
and steal our parents’ wine to drink.
In the dead of night, like jailbirds hidden
beneath the trees, we picked at branches
and planned for foreign days ahead.
It’s funny now to think we never seemed to
eat a plum in time, being always so
bitter, or sick and wet with ferment and rot.
Each season brought a purple harvest;
the sweetly cankerous smell
hanging low above the slack, damp ground.
Even now I sometimes remember
us, and how the whispers of
anxious leaves would rustle up the dawn.
Though we don’t know each other now –
and isn’t that always the way? –
I remember when we weighed our futures
and how for us, the dark, rank fruits
burst their vernix jackets, and spilled
violet ink beneath a chasmal sky.
(Ophelia by John Everette Millais)
Limply sails Ophelia, whose pretty mouth
imbibed the river’s liquor,
now she wears her rue with a difference;
the flowers venture slowly south –
long past her hung-wide jaw –
coiled about her seeping flesh;
her tongue’s gone bad and
she’ll sing no more.
A throwaway. Even before the echo reached the underpass ceiling, it had sunk like a bullet into her. He had impressed them, and there was laughter. It was repeated, by another. A little stiffer than before, her arms pressed against her side; two pink pillowcases full of cake batter. He’d spat out his tab as he’d said it, and for no good reason. He saw her gait change. Her hair was flat from the rain. She did not look up. The two of them strangers, immortalised in the moment, as the vowel hung ripe like the fetor of shit in the air. Her thighs rubbed fffip fffip fffip, quicker now. Soon she was part of the distance. He stood stunned with regret, wanting to touch her, to make it okay again, but the lads had finished their tins, and the motion to get on was made.
They all thought I was a lark, when I swam out from the northern coastline one arctic February afternoon, until they saw it poking out from between the salt-lashed rocks. An arm, swollen and ghastly pale, it beckoned and fell in time with the tide. They screamed me to shore – a hand, a hand, a hand in the water!– and I spat and thrashed my way out. We peered, shivering; the hoard of us, at the puckered fingers, until one more brave than the rest fetched a washing line pole to release the drowned body from the depths. Could be anyone, we said, could’ve been you, they said. I thought of mam, how she would have cried had they lifted my miry corpse from beneath the clacking bay stones. I imagined the news spreading around town. I considered my funeral, the music, the sickly stench of lilies, and thought quiche might be nice for the wake. Maybe Jen would turn up in a black veil, and she’d cry and want to take it all back. Marble coffin. He was so young. Cheesecake for the sweet. But as they pulled the pink rubber glove from the water and threw it splat on the sand, I joined the chortling chorus, not daring to venture back in to the black water, or revisit the empty memory of my death.
The eyes are green. Who
knew? He has a look.
A wolf is in him.
He has figured out that the
most part of him is
wolf
and it lurks and seethes in his eyes, snarling
and guttural.
Everything else is tranquil and flat.
Cool as cruel.
This is a disaster.
Sharon was on the telly the other day. At first, it was just a quick mention – her age, where she’s from, all that nonsense – and then another channel threw her picture up. I made her sit in front of the screen to watch, but she was shy and kept quiet, just sat there, all stiff. That’s you, that is! I pointed to the blurry old photograph they’d scavenged from somewhere. Not many people get to be on TV! She didn’t look too impressed.
Later that week, at the dinner table, she didn’t touch her food. What’s the matter? I asked, but she wouldn’t say. Just sat sort of slumped in her chair. She’d been in bed most of the day, and I could tell she hadn’t even bothered to shower – she was starting to smell bad.
ataraxicat 