Rosa says
I remember snow
When I was a girl I lived
in Siberia
There was so much snow so
much
we skated on a river of ice
Mrs Cameron
born Roth
40,916: tattooed in blue
teaches art
forgets
she remembers.
Don’t ask.
But
Mrs Zabukovec
gypsy eyes
teaches German
born Bulgarian
she remembers
being 18
in Berlin
being 18
Russians
she remembers.
Don’t.
She remembers
long rows of blossoms, white-clustered blossoms
so white so
much breaks
down
remembering snow
Timelessly entwined like
a celtic brooch, golden
gleaming curves and a fierce
sensuality
warm against our skin we can’t
deny this
touching moving stirring breathing
passion and the pulse
You
are the gorgeous one
she teases, she turns
deny this
this
her limbs, spread
make sense of the universe
mid-bridge I feel
such a sense
of connectedness I take
your hand
I hold it
hold my breath
shut my eyes make a wish make this part
of me:of you
ours
is this moment
I look up as you smile back
still here
still whole still healing
hold my hand
A woman is following me
She’s been with me since the street
When I turn, she’s not there
A thin woman, turned sideways – a shadow
in the dark
I can hear her footsteps, scuffling, now
tripping; I can hear
her breath catch, the odd stumbling
sob. She’s crying
in the dark, but when I turn
to speak to her she drops
from sight: the empty
space where I felt her
shocks – I am sure she’d
be there if I could just
see
if my eyes could make out
her outline against black
if I could just define
her features in shadow; a negative
woman, as dark as I am
light, crying
dodging streetlights, avoiding white
floodlights that wash
out subtlety, uncertainties, and leave what is
strong, what is simple – blinded and ambitious
I turn back, and I see her
standing against stars – a black shape
stamped out of the night
stops at the sound of
his name called by
a stranger – then
recalls
who she is and forgets
himself: it’s you
he smiles (he always means it)
he laughs (and feels abashed)
her eyes mirror his
she is his (they always are)
they are both young
veterans
they both can
remember
moments of belief, of the only kind
he’ll know
all strangers
his kind. He is
kind, or he could be, this singled out
outsider
he takes her
camera and asks
Am I in there?
I would argue
I would still be
arguing
as I stepped off the kerb, stepped into
a truck
bearing down
its tyres screech for me
its wheel-flesh burns
its brakes ache and break but always
you between me
between me
and death
your arm holds me back
holding back, straight and safe, your arm
curbs
and I would do
anything to reach you
to be
with you now
to yank you back to safety
I would kill
myself
anyone, anything, I would roll right over
any body
in my way
if I had my way
– screeching tyres, loss
shrieks –
I would run right over
any object, run right
to you: through
you holding on, holding fast
bearing all
In the laundry we found a postcard
Victorian erotica
a woman with blancmange buttocks and
a tentative smile
like her
malleable curves, bovine
eyes: a Gibson
girl, in sepia tones, her body
all graceful billows, as
rich as her husband’s wheatfields
her breasts, white as orchards in bloom
heavy
featured honey-lips and now
decades later, her country child
wades through pock-coral tidal pools
compulsive
he still finds relics
of a ship smashed by the bay
shards of pottery
pitted like daguerreotype
shattered, once-sharp edges smoothed
now aged, in submarine silence
he assembles the fragments for
mantelpiece display – a voyeur
caressing
he holds them with the tenderness
of her remembered
touch
Long and gentle (soft dusky pink)
A girl in a coffeeshop
Closes up, jagged like an oyster.
Her face blurred like a moonstone.
huddled, hunted, in massive tawny furs
(a memory, but raw as a freshly-flayed kill)
can’t feel, can’t breathe, drains away…
her ankles loll like broken necks
The girl in the coffeeshop
Keeps her chin level,
Talks tired and calmly: I’m not
Really crying, she says.
Here. so high,
we can count the clouds.
So few – such thin vapours!
We blow them away
Then
feel their chill.
They clasp my hands as they kiss my face;
they touch us like
a stranger’s tears.
My grandmother, in the kitchen,
is talking to herself.
‘I had a friend called Alice,’
she intones, low voiced.
‘My friend called Alice baked bread;
she baked bread, ever day,
She was ill, and never told anyone
(I never told anyone
this, but she never did.)
Then she died, and nobody worried
no one had worried, she never
told anyone – so,
nobody ever did.’
My grandmother, in the kitchen,
keeps talking, telling herself. She says
she had a friend called Alice – she
says this baking bread, her daily bread –
and I know she never did.
swimming or flying; it’s exhausting
a lurching struggle to keep on top
to maintain buoyancy, a semblance of direction
How I spend my nights, aloft, in
flapping, plunging, plummeting…
speeding into spirals,
open-mouthed crazed arcs
colliding with telephone poles, tangled
in the wires or
strangled by seaweed, out-distancing
a shark – maybe three, vicious
in pursuit: threatening limbs
that churn, that battle, downward-destined and
ploughing through rubber when there’s sharks
all around, there are sharks
there below
How I spend my nights, afloat, and awake,
spent
So mistaken
she looks frightened, wan
a blank face, and dull
no understanding (like a peasant)
no response (a smacked-out hooker)
one
person emptied bleak
alone and
nothing in the world can make this right
Patagonia
iceflint fear
Life, more or less – more often
less – a desolate chill
remote
this is nowhere
she knows
she’s nothing, lichen on a rock
but if
still saying nothing
she just sits
and smiles the next time
life will go on
still clinging
much as before
this is untrue
not necessary
the sun is in my eyes; I glare back
what was given is unguarded but what is
Mine will not be taken
take your fingers from my face
I came
here alone: I remain
unmoved
a flat earth, full of cowboys
hard men, six feet junder
a mythic phallusy, walking dead
and you, your flesh is waxen
eyes are cold, your movements stiff
if you can stand it, stand your ground
but show me life
or I swear
I’l bury you
When he speaks he hears his voice
distorted, shrill – faraway
When he moves
he meets resistance; his progress is stifled
confused, he can’t feel –
no feet, no ground
like living underwater
this stark, still environment tints his vision
chill green
strident luminosity but
he’ll adjust. He’ll grow
clear hard scales, his blood
will run cold – transform to
survive. He’ll learn;
a dampened organism, tongues
insinuate, forever
in motion. He’ll see
through shell-pale eyes now
salt won’t sting
He will return, unwelcome
but welcomed by some
naturally divisive like a mirror
drawing the line between the land of the
existent and the image zone:
His face hasn’t changed and his voice
remains the same; no excuses
to start afresh, no new chink
to offer glimpses
of a different person, unavoidably himself
present physically and emotionally
Omnipresent.
cold, colorless
eyes that register nothing an
expression that won’t alter
altercation made flesh
uncalled for, he’s comeback
underneath he never went
what is true, is eternal; what is false
is what you will
He returns to resume his place here
as if nothing has
Changed
Elly McDonald