Category: Poetry

I was half-hidden on the half landing, when it appeared, under the bulb: a skinned rabbit keening on the kitchen table, a brood parasite that gaped and writhed. That greedily petitioned her to open wide. Craning, I saw her press the savage slash (a pink-lipped supernormal stimulus) to her side. It latched (headfirst). I held breath, wanting to shrink (steadfast). Wanting to slip between the balusters and fall (blood burst). Wanting family to change, least of all.

Cross-legged and urgent,
the man beneath Lambeth Bridge
recommends we (all of us) make love,
surrendering the sex we owe one another.

How disappointing then,
that we linger in long sleep
and joggers brush shoulders
without peeling to the knees.

We go deliberate tidal slow,
Each second monumental
And totally alone

Gravity: tugging our luggage, bidding us settle down
As a new crowd, as doctors and developers
Converging on the Clyde, reminiscing about pills,
Both taken and prescribed. And

No one sighs, ‘Mine’s a small world.’ But I could.
Because I know/know of/once knew these men,
Though never knew them quite like this,
Beaming brightly. What radiance! What display!

What’s gilded these grins today, I wonder.
Fresh fillings, getting married, leaving LA?
Getting published, switching stations,
Radio Four?

Could be. Could be all the sun in Scotland. Why ask?
May as well ponder how the hill became Ben Nevis.
Inevitably, through explosion and withdrawal.

The nurses told your children first,
Passed on the news, passed on the task
Of calling, corralling the mass
Of scraps you left behind.

By no means Complete Collected Works,
But hardly either a meagre sum: a hive,
Four degrees, a swarm of type,
Assorted memories and sons.

Your greying boys will tell the bees
How, well after harvest, you still stirred
Sweetness into each cup of tea, served
Honey with every course.

The city unspools,
Loosing strange trackside shanties:

Hunched-over hills and buckling sheep,
Oily green and dusty ochre,

Blank country that repeats itself
Like rhythmically shuffled postcards.

All that,

Until the tunnel gulps,
Pressing us in peristalsis.

Then, red-ringed jellies
Replace the whole world.

You smell like garden,
She says, meaning soil,
Wood and water. True,

I have been at play,
Breaking planters which
Could not withstand rain.

She flowers; I bend to tend.
You smell like garden,
She says, again.

The pelican at the front desk
Was enough to make you weep.
Beak stuck with violence
In the breast.

Blood welled out the clay, and down
To clotted tongues, more smeared beaks,
To red and ready maws. Blood
Given up for blood.

Her chicks were slight beneath her bulk.
She seemed shrunken by their wants.
They were made to make us sob, so
Blame the artist.

Just know neediness is their nature.
They must grow, before they give
Like the sculptor at the desk,
Kneading at his chest, 

Slick with my salt water.

Our touring, our junketing stalled at Orkney.
We shed waterproofs,
fogged the windscreen, nodded along with McCartney,
waiting for the sun.
Our guide described horizons flecked with haloes,
sea hissing through harr,
fires that stuttered on jutting tallow-smeared stones
planted in peat and,
alongside bones (or charred fragmented clay),
a brown skull gathering rain.

Its brow lay low like the island, cropped by cords,
lengthened by labour,
fussed over by predatory birds, engorged
by excarnation.
This is where the weight lifts off, where blood mists white
sea eagle feathers,
where bones roost in their stacks, men mingling with fish
and slaughtered calves.

She faltered in the kitchen, rocking back
on her ballet flats,
seized with vertigo – knowing what it meant
to switch off the light,
to take the last turn to the village hall
to see her husband.
Adults were rearranging names, counting chairs,
rehearsing speeches,
recounting marathons (the time the farm dog
gave chase, almost won),
Replaying memories from old camcorders
winding back cassettes:
champagne-click-card-games-whirr-road-trips, cheered
by soft narration.
I used to swing from that tree… This was country…
They filled in the lakes…
The girls kept house… Boys clambered on the rocks…
Lifetimes ago now…

We scavenged for joy – finding that pebbles moan
on combed beaches,
hollering our adoration of seals,
whooping in Waulkmill Bay,
hanging on tall tales (stockinged legs sticking out
a bush) recalling
hauling Glad Tidings over the barrier
in the dying light.

He’s gone racing, flying to the afterlife
the minister said
thumbing a small bible with fingerless gloves.
He folded the verse
and, extempore, a murmuration burst
over treeless fields.
You offered a thought: the coffin was a boat
afloat on floral seas
a vessel for one, a lone pioneer
destined for greatness.

Later you explained the tug in your left side
using diagrams of divided womanhood,

unpacking pamphlets of pink chalices
with lowered fallopian horns.

The flesh, it transpired,
didn’t resemble an apple core.

Nor did white flecks flare
like malign constellations.

But when he touched the loop
to your mutable field,

it set you aflame.
State the fact:

your body was fixed
by knotted lightning.