Poems, Winter 2019

Potions

I ate chains for breakfast,

so past any semblance of amount

and how things should be

it was all but piles of pebbles

and more edible substances

such as bread torn and dipped

into marmalade,

husks of corn

or I don't know -

sticks,

or some such

compostable relics.

When we made potions in the garden

it was mud and tore-in petals;

the bathroom was toothpaste and shampoo

overflowing the sink

with their clean volume.

Somehow ordinary materials

such as bark such as baking soda

took on life-giving qualities

or if not life-giving,

promising alteration

at least.

I wish,

I wish there had been sparks

or apparitions.

All of that,

all of my actions

were sponsored by wish.

And where now are the fruits?

The proof -

in rich mangroves,

baskets full and toppling,

stored up from the harvest

of our unequivocal dream.

_____________________________

My grandmothers fed me

Grandma Jean

Welsh cakes (home-made, misshapen, with chewy half-burnt raisins, all dusted white with flour, sometimes too dry, best were fresh and warm from the oven)

Liquorice bears (Pandas to be precise)

Chocolate ginger biscuits (shortbread dipped in dark chocolate, with a crystallised cube of ginger)

Pasta bake (under-salted, plain, crunchy round the edges)

Turkey curry (always after Christmas – plain, under-salted, watery yellow)

Sandwiches cut into small triangles (tinned salmon and cucumber)

Watercress salad (served dripping wet from its rinse, weighed down by cherry tomatoes)

Darjeeling tea (near-white weak, with soya milk)

Honey-soaked apricots (dried apricots soaked in boiling water and honey, kept in Tupperware in the fridge, served with porridge)

Baba Rosa

Cherry slatko (jam with a paint-stripper sweetness, served straight from the jar with a spoon, to accompany afternoon coffee)

Noodle broth soup (an appetiser before lunch – salty stock with floating puddles of oil and chunks of carrot)

Roast potatoes and peppers (salty, greasy, good)

Kafa (Turkish coffee boiled with generous spoonfulls of sugar, drunk from small cups, thick sediment of grounds at the bottom)

Watermelon (size of a small planet, dripping with juice)

Cherries (dark-purple red, full bowl living as still life on the table)

Rakija (brandy made from plum, pear, grape, any fruit, a cure for everything, like a river of fire down the throat)

Lav beer (never quite cold enough, thick urine amber)

Plazma (aimed towards children but enjoyed by all ages, in biscuit or cereal form, claggy sugary wheat, with Bambi as its logo)

_____________________________

My grandmothers were chameleons

they learnt how to shed

poverty

and walked without shoes

through snow,

and war,

to school,

leaving but a trail of footprints

to their now ancient

futures. 

 _____________________________

Still

Four identical

tennis rackets,

square shelves and

Japanese screens.

Books that promise Joy and Wealth

in equal measures.

The light, late November and grey,

the morning, still,

promising frozen hands.

Gracious, evasive, honest when needs be

- these are the clothes I pull across my body

after my shower of cold air.

Records leaning to the left,

essential oils,

a singing bowl.

The slats are closed

- what day is this? 

_____________________________

Confluence

Chinese pear

with elephant skin,

colour of grey-green

or

water

in a paintbrush jar.

I pluck doubt from the tree-top,

sift sand through the letterbox,

I reach out with shy tentacles.

You rummage in my purse

and draw out a pocket

bled and tuned

like a leak

streaming through a keyhole.

_____________________________

Plea

Wake me up when it's tomorrow.

I want to see that greasy sun-face

I want to see the ocean, the stars,

I want to drool on gingham

and scrunch paper napkins

into messy rosebuds.

Give me a chance

to be a star

give me a stage.

Give me a soapbox, a signal, a lemonade stall.

Let me stand for my country and

orate everyman's lost ventures.

Let me be dumb-deaf and profound

let me colour every space in between.

Let me lose, let me wallow.

Let me be at least one or two or three

let me be four

let the whole town roar

let me tear the carpet to shreds

let me bray

let me sizzle on my knees

let me pray.

Let me in, I beg of you,

what more could I ask

what more could you give.

Let me bathe

let me lock down

let me simmer and cajole.

Let me light-hock and ham-nail

let me fathom in the board room

and crack knuckles on my breakfast.

Let me lounge

let me percolate

let me titter and tatter and teethe.

Let me thaw at midnight

let me spasm at dawn.

Let me lug let me teeter

let me spool out in jewels.

Let me value the price of a single sitting

let me lap it up

and marvel.

Let me choose a card

let me turn it like a pro.

Let me trick you into redemption

let me lie for you

let me wait.

Let me foxtrot let me boogie

let me go all night long

let me swallow.

Let me fuss let me fix

let me rile let me twist.

Let me furrow let me live

let me glide -

and be nothing more

than an imprint on a footprint

on the snow.

The surface now is calm.

Let us pray with our hands and feet and fingers

Thank God for gloves

Thank God for those underground networks

Thank God for worms and warmth and song

It is so still

the light so yellow.

Let me in

let me be there

when the clock sticks us all to tomorrow.

What a joy we can count it to exist.

Poems, Autumn 2019

Body of Water

Rowan berries

and most of the moon,

awash with layers

of river-rush -

notes of seventeen or so

clean pitches -

cordial,

reminiscent

of glass

and quenched thirst.

Stem thick as

stick,

autumnal fruit

eager

as the old tree

growing sideways -

acrobatic,

spreading its branches

like a shade of mould.

You could wear the

reeds like ribbons

in your hair -

so thick and green

and begging to be picked.

You get the sense that

this water connects

glacier to swamp

in the same way that

this arm is an extension

of unwritten will

poured down rock

and gathering at the navel,

down at which

with my ancestors

I gaze.

__________________________

 

As if I Am a Map

As if I am a map

I am to track

each decline and ascent,

each pothole, plain and forest,

each groove where foxes sleep

and

bats claim ballrooms of sky.

As if I were not human

I am told to find patterns

as if it is simple,

as if it is cold as bone.

Chants move me,

such as,

it is better with the windows open

it is lighter when the moon is here

the hardest wood succumbs to rot

and beetle-shells make dye

morning and dusk are but shades

a rose speaks the violence of the heart

and when you crunch a stick

you must pray with your feet.

As if there were such a thing

as favours

and investment through planting,

I must present

all manners of evidence

all routes to existence -

the tundra

the mire

and the depth.

__________________________

Cobwebs

Cobwebs hang like cotton tails,

the farmer's son cries

with no sense of scale –

this could be war.

Reeds planted headstrong

with their banana-skin insides

like another kind of cotton

a wetter kind, of sugar.

A young girl

threads her fingers through mine

and leads me

down this path

so familiar

it could be a dream

and the air inside becomes the sky

just as grey and bright

and open.

__________________________

Salvage

Light gives way to storms,

the kitchen abuzz

with wholesome distractions.

The needle pierces the eye

and sews us conscious.

Ink becomes a smudge of nuisance

- antique blot on thumb.

We curate starvation

as if it alone will feed us

and become incrementally

more barbaric, and serene.

Less and less

I see the world

as an open picture.

I know now

it is all reflection.

What is real -

I ask daily, and over, and over.

I have friends who encircle

my patch of grass

and sometimes we have a picnic.

The road becomes

oh so lucid

in the dream in the cavity in the earth.

(Rail tracks become ski slopes become hill).

When I'm living I am not thinking.

How to live with the thinking.

The black spot

plunges down -

a dying star,

a parachute.

__________________________

You Caught Me at Breakfast

The last flight of a wasp

slow as jam

falling off a spoon.

Light inside becomes butter

and there is a smear of rainbow,

a film of cloud.

A door slams -

the reverberation,

its solid clang,

is how I imagine

the realest

and most tangible thought.

__________________________

 

I Could Disappear

The more I explore

the more I crumble

becoming as thin as spider legs

at the seams -

unmoored as I am

from the dinner table

so that I float like a satellite

in orbit

like a dancing teapot

capturing the glint of the chandelier

on its way out.

__________________________

Kiwi

I let my tongue roll

over kiwi and

words slither off

like the long vowels

I once drew out

under morning sheets.

How I recount

those devastations now

from my sexless tower

of river rocks

as big as plates

and kingdoms.