Enemies
Beyond the reach of the body
– we insist.
Balance our submission,
coarse and delicate. Spoil
the thing to get closer
to the thing.
Afterwards
kneeling. Gentle. Ask
for the exception, beg to see
the sight seen only with eyes
closed.
Reciprocity
is a soft animal.
Attempting to satisfy,
your boastful display
of contempt.
Down the leaves.
Wet the dry. The way
takes only a moment.
We are sharper than words
and steeper.
Through Flight
For a moment
we are borne into the air
and then down.
It is there, behind everything.
On the corner outside your Wohnung
where the steps descend
to meet the train
you leave,
it stops.
What is rawness but an opening?
The space inside me to which you climb
and never leave.
Four hours, ours
then I begin counting down.
(What a long journey this life will be
without you.)
Meanwhile the train slips through the night
and we hear nothing. Past the place we inhabited
on different strata, unseeing.
Until evening, the air calm
after a day of enveloping everyone.
And it’s just us. The stove. The coffee
has done heating. Smoke
out of the window. It is us. Just.
Inertia
Not lack of movement, but a steadying
between bodies.
I wake to find the things I couldn’t say in the dream.
The space between train and platform
like the space between this night and the last
where you wait with ink-stained fingers,
water-stained mouth.
Between us, an interval
that separates now from the canal.
It’s not the distance
between here and there
that is unbridgeable.
We live this moment across years.
The pull between planets
that near but never meet.
The Difference
Always a second or two longer than you think.
Not long, but long
considering.
(Because)
breaths, almost,
are the seconds after
when the body comprehends
what the mind can’t concede.
Trying to remember
(something about April)
those gasps
Naked except for the jewellery
You sketched a shelf
for all your imaginary things. Plants and records.
Outlines of books that exist only in your future, best life.
Offered to add something of mine, whatever I liked.
But I couldn’t think
of what I cared for. So I said, ‘Jewellery.’
‘Sweaters and shoes.’
When I meant, ‘My bike lock.’
‘Procrastination.’
‘The lies I told.’
in
touching
the periphery
excited, finally
about something beyond the real
(what happens with the body
always being like a secret
we carry within)
the light of morning draws lines
hinting at the shapes of things outside
as in the dream
where your mother
is not your mother
the face not hers
but breasts
insinuating
and tongue
anticipation grows
out of everything
desire burrows outward
from shadow
brutal, clean as a mirror
Rain
She came at night
heavy in the dark
at the window, she looked
divine.
Answered,
I’m whispering.
Holy
Holy
Holy
whispers.
Antidotes to the ghosts.
Pressed against the pane,
hungry for kisses,
they offer up your memory.
This is what it is about.
Your body in some room and you are no longer there.
We rush forward.
Past the edge.
Not yet.
We are almost there.
Luck
Hard to imagine, two moments
possible at once.
Amid the terror, bliss.
While the rest were made to wade
blood, we made quiet.
Swept it through y-
our visible
exquisite
trans-
lucent veins.
Tonight,
as it happens,
and again tomorrow,
only different.
Then we are allowed morning.
Our hushed breath
granted / taken.
Carelessly we have entangled ourselves
and any unravelling
will be just that –
an unsympathetic tug
and tearing
and tearing
and of course
we know this.
I don’t know how
but somehow
it’s all of this
stuff,
here in this bag,
with all the coins just
lying there
at the bottom, exposed.
I hate change,
but you are easy in a way I never will be,
taking a big sip of water as if it were the source
of your actual
perfect health.
It is your body
that is at your surface,
you lucky dog; you are exhilarated
by the things put here
to sustain you
actually, you would be this horse
we are passing on our way home,
content with the utter simplicity of this grass
and this wind
and soon a firm smoothing with my palm
of all the hairs
on the back of your neck.
I am terrified
that I am the bird
that lands on you for a moment
and when I breathe
you feel my whole body shaking
with the effort of being alive.
I am about you
in circles
obsessed
for that tiny bug
that specific
seed
and you are
meanwhile
just there
capable and magnanimous
drinking the water as if it were the obvious
happiness.
Here it comes now, my
hundredth
sip of air
for your one,
my bones full of it
barely there
but singing
on the inhale
Of course, my horse,
of course.
Aperture
Pressed against the glass
the boys see only the moon
reflected cold
bright
and white.
It’s the fear that gets closer
and the hands.
The itching that makes it the same.
Virgins white as whales,
as virgins, raw as f
ilm
developing under the night sky, slowly.
We see only fingerprints.
Our secrets concealed by light
and our hands sticky
from the sugar of things.
LISA KELLY
The other day I asked my daughter, ‘Can you pass me the thing that opens the door?’ The word key having eluded me. The idea of fluency interests me – and whether we can ever claim fluency in any language. Words and articulacy are power, but words escape me all the time; not only words that I can’t recall or names I’ve forgotten but words I mishear or miss altogether because of my deafness in my left ear. Also, listening to my mother speaking Danish for two weeks every year when my grandparents visited from Copenhagen was fascinating, yet alienating as I couldn’t understand my mother’s tongue. Three members of my family suffered with dementia and journeyed from fluency to the ultimate inarticulacy. To what extent language builds or diminishes identity is a preoccupation. How Danish am I, not speaking Danish? How Deaf am I with my clumsy attempts at British Sign Language? I have to work hard to listen and this requires me to place you to my right side, to watch your lips, to watch your hands, to watch your gestures. How can form not matter? To understand what you say, I must attempt to control our interrelated physical space. Of course, I often fail and confusion, mis-interpretation and annoyance, as well as humour, are by-products. My poems reflect my obsession with form and the physical space that words occupy on the page. Attempting to ‘hang onto’ sound means aids, such as rhyme, are appreciated. Escaping from noise into silence and reading means lines, phrases and fragments from books are often more keenly heard than what is being said to me in everyday life. However, language is as much visual as it is aural. I am excited by the appearance of words, their material quality and the condensed narratives of names. Working as a freelance journalist specialising in technology gives me a level of fluency in esoteric acronyms and a specialist language which masks technophobia. Alternative perceptions offer a relief from the tyranny of pseudo-articulacy. Only politicians’ speeches pretend otherwise. The multiplicity and multifariousness of language, communication and understanding means every interpretation is possible, and possibly wrong. But some fun and perhaps progress towards empathy can be had playing with these ideas along the way.
Apple Quartet
I. JAUNE DE METZ
Repeat If you love me, pop and fly. If you hate me,
burn and die, and think of your amour as you cast
a pip in the fire. At my ripe age, I look on wildings
with a jaundiced eye. Once skin was golden
like the future. Fortune is a liar. He the scion
of a rich family, I from strong stock. Such notions
of choice; in the hearth, a pip scorched desire. No ladders
to reach an apple hanging like a heart in hock. I grafted,
kept close to the earth, was nothing to birdsong,
good breeding in every branch to which pickers
would flock. My crown not high enough for sheep
to graze beneath, among village gossip, wisdom of
soil and season, gatherings to celebrate harvest
with cider and song. Old apple tree we wassail thee
superseded by reason. Longing for lanterns, ribbons
to tie around limbs betrayed by the aphid’s
white ruff of treason. What auguries in peel
can the earth descry? If you hate me, burn and die.
II. THE APPLE MACHINE
Where worms, roots and fingers
mesh, the future is buried in an apple
machine: Redlove sliced
for ruddy flesh. No dwarfing rootstock
helped the queen control the apple
that blessed the bough. A poisoned mind
finds time to dream. Dwarfs mined mountains
for rubies – now Malling 9 is paradise
preserved. We scatter before we plough,
discard the fruit that isn’t curved
to mimic the perfect orb of the sun;
by queens, kings, everyone. A tooth
puller in a souk in Marrakesh wields
pliers to pluck what fireblight
has undone. Like a princess we sleep
in the machine’s crèche where worms,
roots and fingers mesh.
III. HERE, APPLE TREE
Here, branches are stark against white
sky, their bronchial diagram a lesson in
breath. A snared plastic bag puffs with
effort to fly free of some small death,
empty of exotic fruit carried
from shelves, the carrier holds its own
trashed shibboleth. Here, custom rots slower
than our apple selves, rosy at the
buffet, all you can eat for the price of burst
buttons, girdles, belts loosening
at the heart’s abnormal beat to a defibrillation
rhythm, a wassail haunting the wind
in clamour for retreat from acres
of sterilised soil. Half-recalled, If you hate
me burn and die, blown fireblight,
an orange sun’s broil. On the out-breath,
If you love me, pop and fly. Here,
branches are white against stark sky.
IV. A IS FOR APPLE
Abbot’s Early, Ashmead’s Kernel, Autumn Pearmain
Barchard’s Seedling, Billy Down Pippin, Bloody Butcher
Cap of Liberty, Carswell’s Honeydew, Cummy Norman
Doctor Clifford, Dog’s Snout, Duke of Devonshire
Early Bower, Easter Orange, Eccleston Pippin
Fair Maid of Taunton, Falstaff, Forest Styre
George Carpenter, Gillyflower of Gloucester, Gin
Hall Door, Hangydown, Hope Cottage Seedling
Improved Woodbine, Irish Peach, Iron Pin
Jackets and Waistcoats, Jo Jo’s Delight, Jordan’s Weeping
Keed’s Cottage, Kernel Underleaf, Kingston Black
Leathercoat Russet, Lemon Queen, Lucombe’s Seedling
Macfree, Marston Scarlett Wonder, Merton Prolific
Nancy Jackson, Netherton Late Blower, Neverblight
Oaken Pippin, Old Cornish Cooker, Onion Redstreak
Painted Summer Pippin, Palmer’s Rosey, Pam’s Delight
Quarren Dow, Quarry, Queen Caroline
Racky Down, Radford Beauty, Rathe Ripe
Slack-ma-Girdle, Snell’s Glass Apple, Sops-in-Wine
The Rattler, Tinsely Quince, Tower of Glamis
Underwood Pippin, Upright French, Upton Pyne
Vagnon Archer, Valentine, Vallis
Wardington Seedling, Warrior, Wealthy
Excel Jonagold, Excelsior, Exeter Cross
Yarlington Mill, Ye Old Peasgood, Yellow Ingestrie
Yeovil Sour, Yorkshire Aromatic, Zari.
Trailing Spouse
Near the pool, I picked a frangipani blossom.
By the time I spoke to the maid, its petal edges
were breakfast-cereal brown.
Everything is either overripe or sticky –
mangoes, rice, my thighs. Except the maid.
A silk dress would slip and pool at her ankles.
Like the Pomeranian, the baby must be paraded
every day at least twice on the little patch
of grass with all the other babies and Pomeranians.
Work. The Mall. Both are air-conditioned.
Both colonise time. There are compensations,
but like the breeze, they are mostly offshore.
Battling for their place under the ceiling light,
the moths are migraine-inducing. We drink
imported wine. She doesn’t want sex.
Whitewash
The faded swastika on the side of the barn
is showing through the latest layer of paint
and must be painted over by the owner agai
n.
Our generation is generous it seems.
Over dinner we discuss how the farmer’s daughter
was a victim of her beautiful genes,
no choice but to take the Nazi officer’s seed.
‘What would you do?’ The sort of moral dilemma
sorted over a second bottle, until resentment breeds.
Your great uncle a prêté serment –
swore an oath to Pétain – and was préfet
of Calvados. I translate this to an easy life in Caen.
I ask if, after the war, he was detained.
You say, surveillance gardée, (is there a difference?)
but his possessions and farm were returned.