Look at this, you said.
I saw a dozen grey torpedoes hung,
such monstrous baubles, in the depths
of the ocean, motionless
and unaltered by the heft
of water surrounding them.
Scattered indifferently,
their fleshy tonnes suspended
like great iron pendants, laid bare
to the perils of foe and flow
in a thalassic slumber.
We sat sipping tea in silent dread,
to think of such cryptic bed.
Yesterday, you said you had thought about me
and I didn’t ask why.
I didn’t ask if you had been imagining saving me
from an inferno – snatching me from the strong arms
of harm, so that you might not be forced to live
without me;
or if your thoughts were of craving me
in that orange dress you like – at a party where
people stare, and everyone wants what you have
for free.
I didn’t ask whether it had been first thing
in the morning – if my image slid into focus with
the slow light of day, and stayed in place like
a ghost;
or if it was the evening when cicadas croak
their song into the darkness – if you had it then
when we cannot help but think of what we want
the most.
No, I didn’t ask. I just wanted to hear it –
needed to know nothing more of overcoming obstacles
large or small –
it was enough for me
that you thought of me
at all.
The sun is garish
and always yelling –
a loud exhibitionist
a tactile party guest
drunk on their own stories –
it spills around the room
touching everything
behind my thin eyelids
with hot, glittering hands.
We prefer the dark –
the simmering violet void of night
that leaves the vulgar
roaring remnants of day
clinging to the edges –
a night that does not
force herself upon you,
but pulls you close.
You lean in –
her chasmic depths are moonless.
I dreamed last night
of an empty room,
of absent colour,
swaddled tight
in pitch and gloom.
I woke in fright, in
spice-lined sheets,
the heat of night
having bled a cool
clarity from my mind – oh
I dreamed last night.
I saw darkness seep
into the lines, and
blur the light
and though I know
I have no right
I long to tell you why
I dreamed last night.
She had known men
and the language of them
She had heard all of their words
and felt them grip her beneath tables
Perhaps the way she smiled a lot
or touched her hair, or
even what she’d wear,
would bring it on
This is not a mating song.
When she was nine
a neighbour told her parents
that she’d soon be in her prime –
he winked and
they had laughed
In upper school she’d
doodled secret hearts
for boys that hung about in parks
in packs, ’til one called her
His Missus – for that
he’d taken more than kisses
Hot cola breath and
both hands on – that week,
a few diary entry misses
A decade after that
one had pushed her knees apart
in a bar, as she sat:
she’d said she wanted an early night –
she liked a lager
but had to get home to bed
and to feed her cat
Tell you what you need
instead of all that
he’d said
and then he told her
Now she was older
The sun of her youth had set
but still they’d come
and leave her wondering
what about her
made them feel so strong
This is not a love song.
Tonight she’ll find
some way to keep her back
from the wall –
her voice is gone and
this is not a song at all.
He had made her a CD. Initially, he thought about making a tape, providing a useful segue into discussions about old sound systems, a topic about which he knew a lot. He imagined how this vintage gesture might be charming, and give way to his being able to tell her things she might not already know, like how hi-fi is an actually an abbreviation of high fidelity, or how to tighten the belt inside a record player. He thought she might like that. She seemed to like learning.
He recalled, on more than one occasion, her having mentioned almost winning the pub quiz at her local, and she had seemed interested in telling him some of the answers she hadn’t known. Did you know that? She had asked. Sometimes he had, but he never let on.
I’ve got a drawer full of shoehorns
from all the crackers,
from all the Christmases,
since I was ten.
Sometimes, I take them all out
and line them up from
one end of the living room carpet
to the other.
In order of year, I start with the
burned red cedar of ’91,
when Dad took us out
to see Grandma,
and end this strange lineage of mine
with the neon green plastic
of last year, when I took us out
to see Dad.
Tonight I will open the drawer,
and lay out this ribcage
of memory, just once more
upon the floor.
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
He knows what’s there
before it is
A seer
Not brushes but hands
and fingers
Each colour speaks –
a language he can read aloud
He moves shape together
and shifts something
as intangible as cloud
It is mercurial –
abstruse, like time,
both deliberate and imprecise
at once
When he is finished, he
stands back – peels himself
away from the canvas
Beer spills
from the neck of
his clutched bottle and
beads down his fingers,
warm by the time it
reaches his wrist
The tongue races to catch it,
tasting only its colour
On the fridge door,
a rogue fingerprint
of yellow.
I killed a fox, last week. I hadn’t meant to, only, once it had begun to drag its one rank hind leg from under the dogwood and across the lane, I was already going at around forty or fifty, and I just didn’t see it. Jack did, even from the back seat, and, just prior to the moment of impact, I heard a soft ‘fff’ noise come from his mouth, as the full horror of the impending collision was laid bare to him.
I’d picked him up from school only an hour or so after I’d checked out of the clinic. He had been reading one of the books we bought him for Christmas: the hardback annuals full of facts and trivia and records, of men with eyeballs that pop out of their skulls, and women with nails like beige coils of measuring tape. He’d been trying to show me something, in the car.
As we stopped to get out and check the now mutilated orange carcass spread across the road, it occurred to me that I might have missed my chance to swerve because I’d been looking at Jack in the mirror.
ataraxicat 