{"id":2549,"date":"2013-04-18T14:57:39","date_gmt":"2013-04-18T14:57:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2549"},"modified":"2013-05-15T10:39:46","modified_gmt":"2013-05-15T10:39:46","slug":"four-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2549","title":{"rendered":"Four Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cook\"<\/a>
\n 
\nPhotomontage as a private letter<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is not for you.
\nYou that pinned me from my tall flight
\nto be sequinned on a white wall.<\/p>\n

I was meant for a quiet and married man
\nworking in the Metallwerkstatt<\/em>.
\nThe man who had to leave.<\/p>\n

What delicacy it took to forge me, cleaved
\nwith razor blades; cleaved
\nwith blots of gum<\/p>\n

to hold a figure above the earth, ripped
\nwith a dog tongue,
\nfashioning a diamond as big as the Blitz<\/p>\n

into the head of a politician.
\nAm I what he thinks of?
\nAll manner of mod-cons dress me in a gloss<\/p>\n

of the New Woman.
\nI hope he did not see this
\nbefore he had to cut and go. My face<\/p>\n

is a blue logo slit in two; my hand
\na grotesque heft of lipstick. I cannot sign my name.
\nThere might be a fingerprint somewhere here to trace.<\/p>\n

We must be clear, make sense with less\u2014
\nif we are to be apart. All is only this.
\nTo make one picture from a file of two hundred pictures is a good start.
\n 
\n<\/p>\n

Edeka<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is never busy in this supermarket: isomorphic
\nto a civic-square somewhere in the Urals,
\nample host to a slight, calamitous revolution;
\nyet there\u2019s but twenty shoppers here.
\nIt smells of sewage, which seems to be accepted\u2014
\nits workers indistinct, uniformed in jeans
\nand caretaker\u2019s coat; hard to locate.
\nI walk the aisle without
\nclose company, shamelessly brand-seeking
\nepigones of home. I could organise a meeting
\nin the corner by the sausages, plot with my reflection
\nin the butcher\u2019s glass-mausoleum,
\nand not really be disturbed\u2014perhaps form some
\nbreak-away republic beside that ziggurat of tinned
\nsauerkraut. I\u2019d call it Martinberg: all its twenty citizens
\ncould celebrate my beneficence, beneath a portrait by the tills.
\n 
\n<\/p>\n

In the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the K20,
\nBeckmann\u2019s The Night<\/em>
\nwas hung too near the caf\u00e9;<\/p>\n

we both observed this
\nthough used the caf\u00e9 anyway\u2014
\nI ordered K\u00e4se Torte<\/em>, confidently<\/p>\n

(then had to be corrected).
\nThey had furniture like Rietveld\u2019s Steltman chair,
\nthe one that looks so good in gardens;<\/p>\n

I sat still and wondered\u2014like George Costanza\u2014
\nif the waiter liked me,
\nwhich happens so much more here.<\/p>\n

Caffeinated, we watched The Night<\/em> again:
\nit seemed deracinated
\non those whitewashed walls;<\/p>\n

guards stood too close,
\npeople talked, bitte<\/em>, alles klar<\/em>, genau<\/em>;
\nand what we\u2019d gone there for,<\/p>\n

seemed now, not to be the same
\nas what we\u2019d sought\u2014
\nour presence a mere<\/p>\n

confirmation of the The Night<\/em>\u2019s
\nexistence; not\u2014as once I\u2019d thought\u2014
\nthe culmination of some felt experience.
\n 
\n<\/p>\n

And Scene<\/strong><\/b><\/p>\n

Where I come from, we talk to our women.
\nWe do not drug them with plants.<\/em><\/p>\n

On a hill, tearing pink melon, crudely
\nsplit by an angled penknife,
\nhands scooping
\nclumps of seeded mulch, and juice,
\nall sticky, tipped into your singing mouths or lapped
\nfrom hollow palms flecked with the dapple-foam of spit,
\nyou and your friends, in playful feast,
\nre-enact an early scene from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Kevin Costner\u2019s
\ngreatest film, I\u2019d say.<\/p>\n

Then me, in another city,
\nand my then life
\nunknown to you, leaving
\na school-bus a stop early just
\nto buy the video, seen twice by then at the Sutton Odeon, saran-wrapped
\nand stickered, stacked in a cut-out of Costner by the counter, the day it
\nwas first released,
\nat Erdington High Street Blockbuster\u2019s;
\nabsurdly, it was more than fifteen pounds I paid.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m well aware this is something slight.
\nYet it was important for one moment when we met
\nthat we both could quote from it.
\nAnd though not the only thing we had, of course,
\nworth noting still; since
\nlove seeps more from this than chivalry.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is not for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[294],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nFour Poems - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2549\" \/>\n<link rel=\"next\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2549&page=2\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Four Poems - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is not for you.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2549\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-04-18T14:57:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-05-15T10:39:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/cook.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Martin Monahan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Martin Monahan\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2549\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2549\",\"name\":\"Four Poems - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-04-18T14:57:39+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-05-15T10:39:46+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/3935b800b92665dd4b2155e59db37471\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2549\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"description\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/3935b800b92665dd4b2155e59db37471\",\"name\":\"Martin Monahan\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"caption\":\"Martin Monahan\"},\"description\":\"Martin Monahan has stories in The Dublin Review and online at The White Review and The Republic of Letters. 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