She can’t dance without me

And falls still when the music stops. One

Two three, a kick of the hips

Her many joints fold so easily

Giving way to my direction and

Almost out of grasp, her silly stuffed self

Swings wide of each beat. But gracefully

She always comes back. The tango rumbles

Bruising speakers on the cd player,

Bystanders make a space, we own it geometrically

Left to right in squares, leg by leg

Or in great curves and kicks, like sexy-talk.

                         ***

My body grows from taps on solid street

To meaty armpits, fingertips deep in her softness,

Dance, stuffed woman, I have named you

But the clink of grimy coins is its translation.

And her arms grow from mine, her pelvis

Rattles beneath an empty skirt, she is never real,

Made of curtains and motley scraps

Of female fabrics, she wears a gaudy dress,

And I fold her lovingly away at night

But don’t gouge holes to let in air;

I’d laugh to see her stumble in the sun

Alive, jelly-legged on Grafton cobbles.

So we are an effigy,

burning through each tango.

She’s never too close to me; that would be strange

But we are joined at the foot,

The part that slaves and burns, we share.

Though only mine touch the ground.

Christine Speaks

She said it serious

to whatever would listen,

sun bleached flower face, shuck of leaf on weak leaf.

and to me

she slipped it

like a half cigarette;

‘I still believe in the devil’.

Her eyes, dark as an icon’s, delighted

in my surprise;

I pronounced a firm belief

of my own

and, grown up she flicked her bitten fingers

at the furled tongue of the rose,

admired its smell

while I sat embarrassed, hot as hell.

Shelf Stacker

He nests the bananas,

Delicately lifting each bunch

To fit into the yellow curve

Of the next.

He is above the fruity smell,

Grey crumb-washed floor.

He treats with the display;

Balance and counterbalance.

Is this the care of a job

Well done? Or is it art;

A still life of ripe flesh

And silly green plastic.

Later I see him, still suffused

With golden light, arranging cakes,

Feeling the give of flimsy cardboard,

But stacking to perfection.

A Young Girl Imagines Love

Is it like ripe fruit, sweet and base,

or its after-scent?

Is it the intricate smooth green barrier

of leaf skin?

This holds tender sponge.

The outrageous moment a toy breaks.

Heart-catch sharp as plastic snap,

Or, dare I believe it

the slick concurrence of imagined tongues.

Unknowable, though seen from a distance

through sun-feathered lashes,

but soon bird-soft, quick

warm, uncatchable.

Conkering

A clotted horizon.

Black gravel crunched

beneath our runners.

Slow smell of mould

on sated hands;

we have picked richly.

         ***

Clack of stick

on hunted tree,

they streel down

thump! Quick, grab

with grubbing hands

as all the world rolls

beneath our fingers.

Whoops of joy,

but solemn in

close twilight

we rip soft shell.

The fibres pull

like parents hands-

                            growing eye-                  

a shock of conker,

eye-white

Or rich brown

as a girl’s hair,

the sheen of it

crowned with

a blotch of

special grey,

Gnarly rough

and smell of death

upon it.

We pile them,

here’s a baby one

look, here a monster!

But mighty tree

won’t kneel-

He strains all sinews

to freshening

darkness, scrag

grass stirs;

we below,

all muddy-nailed

ignore the wind-

the fields shot.

        ***       

Berry-scratched

we clamber

from the field

(the smallest

trails behind with

the green ones) 

then crowd home

sacrificing dead

leaves underfoot.

Our mighty bounty,

grabfuls of

moony eyes,

suddenly useless.

Cadaverine Magazine 2009