1979 Break time. Out of the staff room window through The fug of pipes and cigarettes The landscape of industrial decline Has empty smokeless chimneys signal debts To history that never will be paid Except by demolition. Cleanliness Of plate glass far prefers the playing fields Whose straight white lines mean
Wild garlic after sudden rainthat left as suddenly –each curlicue sunlit again –was part of all that kept her lonely: they’d noticed it, like everything,every spring. The firstyear alone, surely, you’d think,would be hardest, worst. It’s not, she said. I felt her shoulder.We walked back to our cars,hugged. She left. I glanced back overtheir million
White-collar workers think what elseThey need, scanning the aisles and rowsOf powders, sprays and shower gels,Still looking fresh in office clothes, White shirts exuding cleanliness,Sleeves neatly folded at the wrist:Signs of a manager impress,Along with pager and the twist Of office keys on summer slacks,Crease perfect, colours black or blue.But wait… the shopping trolley lacksA
the Blue Drawing Roomis above the Abbot’sSitting Room the blue fireplace isabove theAbbot’s fireplace (below that —fireplacesall the way down) the East Wing— missingin action the deerin the deer park— eaten antlers overthe GreatDoor a woman under-neath wheezingin chiffon dear lady (up since dawnropingthings off) do you knowcan you say thereal reason whythe fishsank? the
i.m. She bends back over the bush,pursed hand biting for curvatureamong the green, and rainsthree more to the tub at her feet. Then she finds a last one, hunches,lifts and rattles her find, is goneinside. A tractor’s been pacingthe field next door all morning,towards, back, towards, back.She went unnoticed, unnoticing. And we’ll have gooseberry tart
We were all in it an opera in a church my youngest brother going into the Ark in the mask of a blue tit Raven Boy twirling to a clarinet Dove Girl with ballet shoes and a bunch of green leaves and Mrs Noah who did not want to go dragged up the gangplank waving
(after Tracey Herd) most, is not the goal, the finish-line, but the start, (do any of us know where we are heading), the assortment of people, the runners I mean, stretching, going for last minute pees, doing their weird warm-up routines, and the straggle of loved ones congregating in Holyrood Park. I barely remember the
Deny it how you will, there are timesWhen, sitting in the car outside the supermarketYou consider suicide A moment before, you’re scrutinisingThe legs of a young mum and the way the breeze playsGames with her skirt A child at her foot –She has a swing to her that hasn’t diminishedStill has a move or two
We listen to the news on late night TVlike poets waiting for that one perfectadjective wham from the fountainreleased by the front hoof of Pegasus. Instead we get a word which means hurricanebut also warriors out of control crash of a waterfall in burning forestthe music of what happenswhen you open up a hoard of
It’s trying to snow but the window’s open wide. My teacher has her hair in a towel and everyone’s a blur because she’s lost a contact lens. Hello Kate! How are you? Class was cancelled so she’s had a nice long shower and now a friend comes in saying Someone asked today have I thought
was drawn-out but fun there was a bonfire with those small sausages on sticks we all whooped it up on homebrew afterwards — not much some- body’s dead uncle with a space for a face onto which we projected our various longings and fears hung about for a time — a clutch of haiku (bad)
Odd to think about it now, more than two decades since a bag of blood failed to connect with a tube and spilt over the chair, the floor and you. Not knowing what to do we watched it spread until the practical nurse produced saline to remove the stain and make it better, no harm
We’d wear our best to the factory bench to catchsome of the luminescence in their folds, painted nailsand teeth with the stuff Mrs Curie had kept phialsof in her pockets like tubes of mints. Became knownas the ghost girls for the soft, green light we emitted. Looking back we guessed the men with dollars in
Jack would play the organ At the local Odeon Until the talkies came. Could Gwyneth love him the same As when in matinees Crisply shadowed rays Of Hollywood had been On the smoke and on a screen Like linen on the bed Where nothing at all was said, And they moved in a black and
Are we too old for fish-‘n’-chipsToo well-dressed, perhapsTo queue in a place not found on mapsAs far from a taxi as it’s possible to beAnd whose idea was this anyway? We’ll take them back to mine; noSorry, yours. Am I staying over? EarlyRise, you say. I’d forgotten. Not thinking,And to be honest not feeling greatI’ll
After Clacker had roared into the deserted school playground in the works pickup, he wouldn’t budge from his cab. He left it to us to flip the clips to free the tailboards. We took our time dragging the ten-foot sections of Mills scaffold frames and boards off the bed, while he sat in a bubble
Severed from the rest of what it wasI nab it, pulley-wheel it forty footto the top of the scaffolding. Just after eight,the cars crawling over the flyover,the sun will soon be level with me; here,away from all forgettable activity below,sat on this dry board I settle to my work. What better place to be? What
They are happy, the subjects of the pictures,After a fashion. For, however terribleThings may be, and they seem so even there,They have a peace: the magnificent marble,The red bricks’ warmth that the artist captures,The postures of inhabitants who shareThat space will not fold into the rubble,Nor will they suffer horrors other thanThe ones that they
i.m. Julia Bentham Thirteen children wheel your bed down the road to the shingly tide-line, the sea’s great oxygen machine. Plugged into a featureless moon it sucks in the pebbles, pauses, exhales, breathes for you, before you set sail. The waves practise their scales, feel for arias between the stones. Thirteen children kneel,
I have a flat now, three rooms and a view,a place, should your ex-wife think to enquire,of paint tins, crazy paving, sprays of blueconvolvulus on sagged and laddered wire,a bedroom lit all night by passing cars,a kitchen diner, mug-rings, missing tiles,a lounge with peacock feathers in a vaseto add, the landlord says, that touch of