On Waking Up Your first question, not yet, not quite yet being awake, is not quite out of the question or your mouth and isn’t the fictional where am I? of old stories, but as one or more of your eyes confesses and re-admits light as a matter of […]
Poetry
Two Poems
(E Major) And she was Grist to his mill And he was Grit to her pearl And she was Salve to his burn And he was Soil to her furrow And she was Touch to […]
Three Poems
The Jennifer Arthur last seen at a posh college dealing ironically: first to go. The Peter who wore out his supports and said, while I tried not to fidget, “They’ll share their words of wisdom, even give you money, but time? Not so much.” Louise who discovered a talent for big and dirty simulations. Paula […]
Stirrup and Anvil
I think my hummingbird has a transistor Radio in its heart, that it’s turquoise, and Picks up all the marbles from the garden, To pile them along the windowsill As though such things ripen. His spider Thread tongue shines, sugar-glazed As he drinks from the feeder. Where best to wrap an Ace bandage Is not […]
To be an Epicurean
Pleasure is the alpha and omega of a blessed life, our first and native good, for that reason we do not choose every pleasure whatsoever. Epicurus 1. The last time I abandoned you was at a ball game in between innings with a hotdog in my hand and a hat on my head. […]
Two Poems
Holiday Spilled purple on the cliffs like wine and green as if peppermint chews have melted down a gas fire, white person pink light, full as a teardrop, my heart clawed from wet sand smashed into pies. I wouldn’t be surprised if Eric Rohmer fell on my towel to explain the inevitability of going […]
Two Poems
Value Reflections on Joseph Mayer, at the Walker Art Gallery The jeweller reckons up his treasures – lets the words, proof of life, slip to silver goblets. From his window you watch the clock gauge Lime Street station. Departures trouble arrivals – there’s an ache in each welcoming kiss. Silence blooms through you like […]
Sofa
‘Here the heart May give a useful lesson to the head’ — William Cowper, The Task, Book VI, ll85-86 Horsehair. In the 70s in a one-up-one-down shared with George (upstairs), who ironed his curly hair straight and favoured the cravat of Edward Fox in The Day of the Jackal. Back- to-back on the […]
Two Poems
Some Whales He is still wearing shorts and flip-flops in the office although summer ended for good three years ago now because it also wanted him to stop. He eats his soup like his bowl is a teat. He drives a small Japanese car with a high seating position. He has an ergonomic mouse and an ergonomic […]
The Lamplighter
i.m. Florence Winifred Bedford 20.10.1915 – 09.09.2008 He brought that warm glow the children liked, soft light for jump-the-chalk and pitch-and-toss, the giggling swirl of humbug heaven then kiss-the-girl-and-run-away. In Dunlop Place, Sam Carter was your champion lighter, a beaming glow-worm from dawn to dusk, lighting the dark as you ran home. ‘Light’s ghost,’ you […]
Twenty Three Fifteen
Twenty Three Fifteen Don’t look at the sun. * This is the last thing that you tell me before you leave. Or one of the last things. * You could look at it through a colander. That’s another. * The thought of standing in the garden with a colander on my head […]
Two Poems
The Desert The desert is in the heart of your brother. Your brother doesn’t even read poetry, but keeps the desert’s book, with that dumb title, where you’ll see when you next scrounge dinner. But the desert’s just one of these kids who make bad jokes at a poem’s expense, you say. Your brother sticks […]
THE BABY IN THE DITCH
THE BABY FOUND MIRACULOUSLY UNHARMED IN THE DITCH TALKS ABOUT THE TRI-STATE TORNADO OF 1925 Don’t bother huddling in the dusty basement. Save your batteries for the TV remote, your candles for the wake. All those stories you’ve heard— how the southwest corner walls, built true by honest men, will hold while all else flattens— […]
Progressive Heart Failure
Another conversation about death: ‘You can stab your heart – you won’t feel it – the heart’s autonomous’ he says. I twist my daughter’s abandoned pipe cleaner into a blue, three-petalled flower. My father’s heart is doing its own thing – racing blood around his body too fast, forcing him to lie down. Only he […]
Two Poems
The Tightrope Walker The bearded grind-organ lady’s Quaker-bearded monkey, depressed elephants, sedated lions, insouciant ungulate dromedaries and belligerent camels will tomorrow be ushered into confinement. With these will go the washing-machine-cum- bisected-jet-engine that spins, that basin of sticky wisps, spun stratosphere that collects on a dipped stick to make edible pink insulation. Stacked like ark […]